Interferon alpha low dosage course induces biochemical response and immunomodulation in chronic hepatitis B

Interferon alpha (IFN-α) is the most used drug for chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients, but about 40% of patients only respond to high-dosage course. Side effects of this drug can be quite serious, and for some categories of patients only low dosage treatment is suitable. The aim of this work was to study IFN-α low dosage course efficacy in CHB and to evaluate immunomodulatory aspects of this kind of treatment. Immune parameters, such as the number of CD3+, CD4+, CD8+ lymphocytes, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), T lymphocyte sensitization to HBcAg, liver-specific protein, rIFN-α and recombinant interferon gamma (rIFN-γ), IFN-α and IFN- γ production capacity of peripheral blood cells were tested, using the peripheral blood of 29 CHB patients at pre- and post-treatment levels. Not all the patients demonstrated complete (biochemical and virological) response to therapy, but 45% of them were biochemical responders, showing post- treatment normalization of ALT. The dynamics of some immune parameters were different in responder and non-responder groups. Pretreatment lymphocyte sensitivity to HBcAg, rIFN-α and rIFN-γ was found to be of predictive value. HBcAg mediated activation dynamics of T lymphocytes coincided with ALT level alterations.