Alterations in the Metabolism of Tryptophan in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Six Months after Pegylated Interferon- α 2a Treatment

Pegylated interferon alfa (PEG-IFN- α) associated with ribavirin (RBV) has been the standard of treatment for chronic hepatitis C virus (CHC) infection in the last two decades. The main problem of the PEG-IFN-α / RBV therapy, though, is the occurrence of many side effects. Most of them appear after 12 weeks of therapy and could ther efore be avoided by a shorter duration of treatment. Neuropsychiatric symptoms such as depression, however, often appear as early as after two weeks of treatment (Leutscher et al., 2010).

Source: Psychoneuroendocrinology - June 23, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tomasz Pawlowski, Krzysztof Malyszczak, Ma łgorzata Inglot, Małgorzata Zalewska, Marek Radkowski, Tomasz Laskus, Dariusz Pawlak Source Type: research