STAT3 and chronic hepatitis: It is noteworthy that in present study we were not able to establish a link between the.up/down-regulation of SOCS3 and STAT3 expression with SOCS3 SNPs to predict SVR to a combination of PEG-IFNα and ribavirin in chronic hepatitis C genotype 3a infected patients due to overall non-significant association of these SNPs in HCV patients.