With this in mind, the aim of our study was to evaluate the relationship between insulin resistance and viral load modifications as well as the possible influence of body mass index (BMI) and serum leptin as metabolic confounders on insulin resistance kinetics in nondiabetic and noncirrhotic genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C patients during peginterferon alpha and ribavirin treatment. The gene discussed is LEP; the disease is chronic hepatitis C virus infection.