Circulating Apo 2L levels decreased in genotype II hepatitis C with pegylated interferon-2 alpha treatment.

Pro-inflammatory factors regulated by TRAIL in vivo may lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies for diseases as diverse as infection, autoimmunity and allergy. In this study we aimed to investigate the relationship between IFN treatment response, HCV viral load and sApo 2L levels. Eleven HCV-treatment naive HCV-infected patients were treated with pegIFN alfa-2a. Intensive serum circulating Apo 2L levels were monitored at study visits on day 0 (pretreatment), and in weeks 4, 6 and 12. HCV-RNA and sApo 2L levels decreased gradually with PegIF-alfa 2 treatment and the differences were significant between day 0 and week 4 (p 0.001, p 0.005 and p 0.01, p 0.005 respectively); between day 0 and week 12 (p 0.001, p 0.005 and p 0.001, p 0.000 respectively); between weeks 6 and 12 (p 0.01, p 0.05 and p 0.01, p 0.05 respectively). We suggest that decreased levels of circulating Apo 2L may reflect its increased binding to its ligand expressed on hepatocytes or lymphocytes under the influence of PegIFN treatment.