Microarray Analysis of IFN-Induced Gene Expression in Obese and Non-Obese Patients With Chronic Hepatitis C

The response rate to interferon-based anti-viral therapy for chronic hepatitis C is lower in patients who are obese. However, it is not clear whether this is related to suboptimal dosing of the medication or alterated response in obese patients. Alterated immune response had been reported in obese patients. The goal of current study is to determine the immune response to interferon in obese compared to non-obese chronic hepatitis C in an tissue culture system.

To examine our hypothesis, we will incubate PBMC samples from obese and nonobese patients with IFN, followed by microarray analysis to compare the IFN response patterns in both groups of patients and to identify genes differentially regulated between these two groups. Identification of such genes will provide important insight to the mechanism of the antiviral effect of HCV. The identified genes will have the potential of serving as targets for pharmaceutical intervention aiming at enhancing the efficacy of IFN therapy for obese patients. This is an open-label study. Ten obese and 10 nonobese patients with chronic hepatitis C will be recruited. For the purpose of this study, obese is defined as body weight \>85 kg and BMI \>30, and nonobese as body weight \<75 kg and BMI\<25.