0000000000948693
AUTHOR
Otto Haller
Interferon-γ inhibits replication of subgenomic and genomic hepatitis C virus RNAs
Persistent infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. All treatments known so far rely on the antiviral activity of interferon alfa (IFN-alpha) that is given alone or in combination with ribavirin. Unfortunately, only a fraction of the patients clear the virus during therapy and for those who do not respond there is currently no alternative treatment. Selectable subgenomic HCV RNAs (replicons) have been recently used to investigate the effect of IFN-alpha on HCV replication. However, it has not yet been analyzed whether other cytokines also play a role in the innate immune response against HCV. Here we show th…
Interferon-alpha inhibits hepatitis C virus subgenomic RNA replication by an MxA-independent pathway.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) persists in the majority of infected individuals and is a major cause of chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Chronic hepatitis C is currently treated with interferon (IFN)-α or with a combination of IFN-α and ribavirin. The availability of an HCV replicon system (Lohmann et al., Science 285, 110–113, 1999) allowed the investigation of the effects of IFN on genuine HCV replication in cultured cells. It is shown here that IFN-α inhibits subgenomic HCV RNA replication in HuH-7 human hepatoma cells. Immunofluorescence, Western blot and Northern blot analysis revealed that levels of both HCV protein and replicon RNA were reduced after treatme…