Assessment of serum level of MiRNAs before and after treatment with sofosbuvir in Egyptian patients with chronic HCV infection

We aim to detect the mostdifferentially expressed miRNAs in serum of Egyptian patients with chronic HCV infection before and after treatment using new treatment protocol of Sofosbuvir; pegylated interferon and ribavirin. The current study conducted on 50patientswith chronic HCV infection who received the treatment and 20 healthy controls. Array analysis revealed that, over-expression of 80 miRNAs and down-regulation of only 4miRNAs with significant different among HCV patients before treatment (over 2-fold changes). Both miR-122 and miR-221 were found to be significantly up-regulated among patients before treatment compared with control group (P = 0.04 & 0.003 respectively) and significantly down regulated in response to treatment (P = 0.02 & 0.008 respectively).In conclusion, aberrantmiRNA array especially miR-122 and miR-221could potentially extract data for HCV patients in response to combined new therapy. These findings empathizes the importance of contributing the role of miRNAsduring presence and clearance of HCV.