Effect of prolonged administration of pegylated interferon/ribavirin therapy in genotypes 2a and 2b: propensity score-matched analysis.

Background And Aim: Chronic hepatitis C genotype 2 patients show high susceptibility to pegylated interferon plus ribavirin therapy (PEG/RBV). However, the differences in response to therapy between genotypes 2a and 2b, and the efficacy of prolonged therapy for refractory patients have not been evaluated. We investigated the differences in response to PEG/RBV between each genotype and examined the efficacy of prolonged therapy.