A SNP for Hepatitis C

Duke's David Goldstein and colleagues found a SNP associated with people's response to treatment for hepatitis C — the treatment is more successful in European-American than in African-Americans. The SNP, they report in an advance online publication of Nature, is located near interferon-lambda-3. "Given that the polymorphism appears to associate with natural clearance as well as treatment response, it seems likely that the gene product is involved in the innate control of HCV," the researchers write. The study was financed by Schering-Plough, which will own the IP on any diagnostic test resulting from the paper, adds the New York Times.