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Clinical, pathological, and virological analysisincluding hypervariable region-1 of hepatitis C virus(HCV) was performed to predict the effect of interferon(IFN) on 41 patients with chronic hepatitis type C. The low virus load, low frequency ofthe mutation in the hypervariable region-1 as the changeof amino acid and high level of serum aminotransferasemake one estimate the good effect of IFN on patients with HCV. Mutation in the hypervariableregion-1 of HCV measured by fast assay fluorescencesingle-stranded conformational polymorphism was morefrequent in nonresponders to IFN than responders. Themost frequently mutated position was amino acidnumber 406. This indicates that the specific mutationsite might affect the response of IFN.