Treatment of chronic hepatitis C in children

Chronic hepatitis C is a mild disease in childhood; however, it has a low rate of spontaneous remission over the years and fibrosis seems to increase along with the duration of the illness. Therefore, interferon treatment has been proposed in recent years. Unfortunately, available therapeutic trials include very few children, often with underlying diseases, and the results, sometimes very encouraging, have to be interpreted with caution. Overall, it seems that the rate of end-of-treatment and of sustained response to interferon reported in more recent studies may be similar to that in adults (8–20% for sustained response). HCV genotypes 2 and 3 and low levels of viremia could be factors in the selection of candidates with greater chances of response to interferon.