Efficiency of treatment of long period pegile-interferon in delta hepatitis

Delta virus infection is one of the most important hepatic disease in our country as world wide. Delta hepatitis is the most uncommon and possible the most severe form of chronic viral hepatitis. Despite all, it?s treatment is still uneffective and has few alternatives. Delta hepatitis infection causes more fulminant hepatitis, early cirrhosis, terminal liver inadequacy, and higher risc for hepatocellular carcinoma than other hepatitis forms. There is no more alternative utility treatment way except interferons in hepatitis delta infection.Twenty one naive patients with chronic hepatitis delta were included to this study. The patients were arranged in two groups. First group contains 11 patients who received PEG-IFN-?-2a for 1 year, and second group contains 10 patients who received PEG-IFN-?-2a for 2 years. We ascertained the effects of the treatment on liver function tests, virologic parameters and changes in liver histopathology. No significant differences were observed at baseline characteristics as age, gender, necroinflamation score in liver histopathology, fibrosis, viral load, liver function tests and hematological parameters between the two treatment groups. HDV-RNA became negative in 2 patients in first group (18.1%), and 3 patients in second group (30%). This negativeness continued up to 24th week after treatment had ended both of two groups. There was significant differences in percenty between two groups, but no significant differences statically ( p>0.05). It might be result of limitted number of patients. Beside this, our results about PEG-IFN-?-2a treatment for chronic hepatitis delta infection are similiar other reports published in our country.The most common side effect in both groups were influence like symptoms. The frequency of side effects had no differences between groups.In conclusion, PEG-IFN-?-2a treatment for two years has more superiority than one year treatment in percenty. Limitted number of patients in our study suggests other studies for large series in the future.Key Words: HDV, Treatment time, Peg-interferon