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Article Review/Hyperlink
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Tsai NC, Zuckerman E, Han SH, Goad K, Redeker AG, Fong TL
Effect of iron depletion on long-term response to interferon
-alpha in patients with chronic hepatitis C who previously did not
respond to interferon therapy
Am J Gastroenterol
(Oct) 92:1831-1834 1997

Next week we will be linking to a series of papers and an editorial from the
Annals
suggesting that it may well be cost effective to treat many HCV patients with
interferon. In
preparation for this, this week we link to a paper by
Telfer et al
describing adjunctive use of
ribavirin, and the present paper by Tsai and colleagues suggesting that iron-
depleted patients may
respond better to interferon treatment. The paper is not very strong, and
the added benefit may
well be from a longer treatment period. However, at a time when
nephrologists are being pushed to
load patients with iron to ensure proper treatment of anemia, potential
adverse effects of this on
the liver in HCV(+) patients may need to be considered. (jtd)
The abstract of the Tsai et al paper is available from the National Library
of Medicine's PubMed
site:
click here .
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