الفهرس 
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Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major global health problem with as many as 170 million people infected with the virus worldwide. HCV is one of the main health problems in Egypt, where the overall HCV antibody prevalence is 14.7% among the adult Egyptians. The outcome from acute HCV infection (resolving or chronicity) is generally belived to be determined by the competence of host innate and adaptive immune responses. Interleukin (IL) 18 and IL27 are believed to play an important role in both types of immunity.
In this study, we tried to find the possible association between the host genetic factor (IL18 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP).rs 1946518) and IL27p28 SNP.rs153109) and the outcome of disease in patients infected with HCV genotype 4(HCV-4).
For this purpose, genotyping of the two SNPs was done and showed non-significant difference in the allele and genotype distribution between HCV chronic patients and spontaneous resolvers groups in case of IL18 SNP.rs 1946518 while significant difference was found between the groups in case of IL27p28 SNP rs153109 with special presence o f GG genotype of the later SNP in the group of the resolvers. In addition, IL27 level was measured in the two groups and the results showed non-significant difference in its level.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to determine the association of these SNPs with viral clearance in patients infected with HCV-4. We concluded that GG genotype of IL27p28 SNP can be used as a genetic biomarker to indicate the susceptibility of patients to resolve HCV.