Neuro-biological Inferences into the Depressive Disorders of Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Treated with Interferon and Ribavirin

Background This work is intended to establish a relation between two diseases, medical and psychiatric, both of them considered public health issues – chronic hepatitis C and depression. Interferon has been a great progress for the chronic hepatitis C patients’ therapy, but the treatment is encumbered by the occurrence of depression on 3-57% of patients. The purpose of this work is to assess the percent of the depressive disorder on chronic hepatitis C patients treated with interferon and ribavirin, as well as the monitoring of the related risk factors, upon depression occurrence and the evolution during anti-depressive treatment.