Efficacy of interferon therapy in elderly patients with chronic hepatitis C

OBJECTIVE: We assessed the efficacy and safety of interferon (IFN) monotherapy in 84 elderly patients aged > or =65 years with chronic hepatitis C in a retrospective cohort study. METHODS: Twenty-two of the 84 elderly patients were treated with IFN at a dose of 6 million units daily for 6-8 weeks, 18 patients were treated 2-3 times a week for 24 weeks and 44 patients were treated daily for 2-8 weeks and 2-3 times a week for 16-24 weeks. RESULTS: A sustained virological response (SVR) occurred in 35.7% (30/84) of the patients by intention-to-treat analysis. Multivariate analysis showed that patients achieved a significant SVR when: (1) serum HCV-RNA level before IFN therapy was <100 KIU/ml (p < 0.0001) and (2) staging of liver fibrosis was mild (p = 0.040). Eleven (13.1%) patients discontinued the IFN regimen due to adverse events. Regarding factors predicting discontinuation of IFN, univariate analysis showed that patients aged >70 years were prone to drop out of therapy due to adverse events in IFN therapy (p = 0.009). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that IFN administration is suitable for 65- to 70-year-old patients with chronic hepatitis C without genotype 1b and high virus load.