Post Transplant Course of Hepatitis C Patients After Living Donor Liver Transplant in Association With Interleukin 28 B

Hepatitis C is the leading cause of liver transplants in the USA. Given that there is a national organ shortage, living donor liver transplantation has became a viable option for patients with end stage liver disease who are not severely ill. Recently particular polymorphisms of IL-28B gene were reported to correlate with histological recurrence and antiviral treatment response after orthotopic liver transplantation for hepatitis C. Similar results have not been described yet in living donor liver transplant patients.

There is data suggesting slightly inferior outcomes in living donor liver transplants when done for hepatitis C. The investigators postulate that such inferior outcomes may be related to IL28 polymorphism concordance (i.e., unfavorable recipient polymorphism patients receive similarly unfavorable polymorphism livers from their relatives).