Peginterferon α in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B

Introduction: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a global health problem. Peginterferon alpha (PEG-IFN), which includes PEG-IFN alpha-2a (Pegasys) and PEGIFN alpha-2b (Peg-Intron), can be used to treat patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection. A finite duration of PEG-IFN therapy may lead to long-term viral suppression. Clinically, it is important to identify super-responders and null-responders to PEG-IFN due to its substantial side effects. Areas covered: From the literature review, it is known that PEG-IFN is more effective for hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive patients who have high pre-treatment alanine aminotransferase level, lower HBV DNA level and genotype A (vs genotype D), as well as those with more favourable viral predictors, such as precore stop codon or basal core promoter mutants infections in Asian patients and wild-type virus in Caucasian patients. For HBeAg-positive patients and HBeAg-negative patients with genotype D infection, PEG-IFN therapy could be terminated early at week 12 or 24 in primary non-responders defined by the Hepatitis B surface antigen stopping rules. With regard to host factors, single nucleotide polymorphisms of IL28B do not seem to affect the treatment outcomes in Asian patients, but its role in Caucasian patients remains disputed. Expert opinion: Most of the known predictors need validation by large prospective trials. In addition, we need to identify more baseline predictors for super-responders in order to achieve personalised PEG-IFN treatment for CHB.