Vitamin D level and sustained virologic response to interferon-based antiviral therapy in chronic hepatitis C: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

What It Covers

Researchers studied Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in the context of chronic and systemic inflammation in this meta-analysis publication.

The baseline 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) level has recently been reported to be an independent predictor of sustained virologic response (SVR) to treatment with pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) plus ribavirin (RBV) for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.

However, studies have yielded inconsistent results.

Thus, the researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to clarify any association between baseline 25(OH)D level and SVR in HCV therapy.

Who the Included Studies Covered

Studies involving patients with HIV co-infection, previous liver transplantation or those receiving vitamin D supplementation were excluded.

How the Review Was Done

Two reviewers searched four electronic databases (Medline, Embase, PubMed, and Cochrane trials register) and relevant international conference proceedings up to March 2014 for studies treating chronic HCV infection with PEG-IFN plus RBV where baseline 25(OH)D level was tested.

The mean baseline 25(OH)D level was compared between those who achieved and those who failed to achieve SVR.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Dietary Supplements, Genotype, Hepacivirus, Hepatitis C, Chronic, Interferon-alpha, Outcome Assessment, Health Care and Polyethylene Glycols.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Cholecalciferol and Vitamin D.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in people with chronic and systemic inflammation.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (Journal of hepatology), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, Chronic and systemic inflammation research.