Hepatitis-C Patients Have Reduced Growth Hormone (GH) Secretion Which Improves During Long-Term Therapy With Pegylated Interferon-α

GH insufficiency is common in patients with chronic HCV infection. While GH secretion improves during antiviral therapy, IGF-1 remains low, indicating persistent GH resistance of hepatocytes. Whether improvement in GH secretion during treatment is due to a direct drug effect or related to the suppression of viral load could not be differentiated, as most patients demonstrated a positive virologic response.