Study of pruritus in chronic hepatitis C patients

Table 1 Scoring of nocturnal pruritus

Score	Nocturnal pruritus
4	Very severe, interfering with sleep
3	Severe, very annoying, substantially interfering with sleep
2	Moderate, annoying and troublesome, may interfere with sleep
1	Mild, not annoying or interfering with sleep
0	None

Table 2 Clinical characteristics of chronic hepatitis C patients treated with or without interferon

	IFN (-),n = 35	IFN (+),n = 54	P value
Age	60.0 ± 12.3	56.4 ± 9.2	0.1112
Sex	M:17; F:18	M:27; F:27	0.6351
Duration of IFN therapy (wk)	NA	22.3 ± 17.4	NA
HCV RNA (Log IU/mL)	6.0 ± 1.3	1.2 ± 2.0	< 0.0001
ALT (U/L)	60.5 ± 52.6	33.4 ± 26.2	0.0017
ALP (U/L)	307.0 ± 108.0	265.2 ± 77.2	0.0360
GGT (U/L)	48.9 ± 37.41	45.4 ± 44.3	0.6981
T-Bil (mg/dL)	0.86 ± 0.28	0.85 ± 0.44	0.9323
Alb (g/dL)	4.19 ± 0.40	4.15 ± 0.44	0.6315
PLT (× 104/μL)	14.5 ± 5.1	13.1 ± 6.9	0.2938
PT	84.2% ± 7.5%	86.0 ± 10.1	0.7966

ALT: Alanine aminotransferase; ALP: Alkaline phosphatase; GGT: Serum γ-glutamyltransferase; T-Bil: Total bilirubin; Alb: Albumin; PLT: Platelets; PT: Prothrombin activity; NA: Not applicable.