IFNA1 and chronic hepatitis C virus infection: As previously described [26] high serum IL-10 levels may be related to a poor response to IFN treatment in patients with chronic hepatitis C. In this sense, it would have been interesting to investigate other markers such as spleen markers or beta2-microglobulin, although it has been described that neither spleen measurements nor serum beta2-microglobulin levels were able to predict therapeutic response to antiviral therapy [27].