Interferon-alfa in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B

BACKGROUND: Interferon-alfa has been used in the treat-ment of chronic hepatitis B for more than 20 years and hasits own advantages including a definite course of therapy,no production of drug-resistant variants, and sustained effi-cacy. This review was to understand the role of interferon-alfa therapy in chronic hepatitis B.DATA RESOURCES: An English-language literature searchusing Medscape and MEDLINE was performed and a totalof 48 articles on the treatment of chronic hepatitis with in-terferon-alfa or pegylated interferon-alfa were selected.RESULTS: Interferon-alfa therapy was associated with ahigher HBV DNA inhibition rate and HBeAg loss rate com-pared with controls, and it may have long-term beneficialeffects in terms of HBV clearance, reduction of hepatocel-lular carcinoma, and prolongation of survival. Pegylatedinterferon-alfa was more effective than conventional inter-feron-alfa in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B as well aschronic hepatitis C, and was also associated with greater ef-ficacy than conventional interferon in difficult-to-treat dis-ease.CONCLUSIONS: Interferon-alfa is still regarded as one ofthe first-line drugs for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B.Pegylated interferon is a more promising therapy than con-ventional interferon-alfa, especially in patients with refrac-tory chronic hepatitis B.