Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a main cause of chronic hepatitis and it may leads to cirrhosis, hepatic failure and hepatocellular carcinoma. Chronic HCV patients are subjected to treatment with ribavirin and interferon-α (IFNα) but,which have achieved only limited success. The main aim of this study was to measure indoleamine-2, 3dioxygenase (IDO) in chronic HCV patients which could explain the failure from therapy. Five ml of peripheral blood were collected from 30 patients with chronic HCV

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... ion and 10 healthy control volunteers. Patients were categorized in to responders and non-responders according to viral titre upon IFN-α treatment. The levels of IDO were measured in the sera of the recruited subjects. Significant increases (P˂0.001) in the concentration of IDO were observed in IFN-α non-responder patient when compared with responders and healthy control. Conclusion: Nonresponsiveness of chronic HCV patients to IFNs based therapy associated with increases in suppressive mechanisms, opening a new avenue for targeting these molecules in HCV therapy.