Better treatment for Hepatitis C

New treatment is a significant improvement

Scientists have developed a treatment for the liver disease Hepatitis C that may be far more effective than current drugs.

Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is estimated to affect 170 million people worldwide, and more than five million in Europe.

Approximately 20% to 30% of these people develop chronic liver disease, and many require liver transplantation.

Currently a drug called interferon alpha-2b is given to patients for a 48-week period.

However, this leads to a sustained improvement in only 15% to 20% of patients.

Writing in the Lancet medical journal, researchers from The International Hepatitis Interventional Therapy Group report a new treatment for chronic HCV infection that uses a combination of interferon alpha-2b and a drug called ribavirin.

The investigators recruited 832 patients aged 18 years or more with chronic HCV who had not been treated with interferon or ribavirin.

The patients were randomly allocated one of three regimens:

• Interferon alpha-2b three times a week plus ribavirin every day for 48 weeks
• The same combination for 24 weeks
• The standard interferon alpha-2b treatment three times a week.

Drop out rate

The combination regimen for 48 weeks had the best response with 43% of the patients experiencing sustained improvement.

One in three (35%) of patients who took the treatment for 24 weeks registered an improvement.

Only 19% of those on the standard treatment registered an improvement.

However, 53 of the 277 patients who took the combination therapy for 48 weeks had to stop due to adverse reactions.

This compared with only 22 of the 277 patients who took the treatment for 24 weeks.

Despite the high drop-out rate, the researchers conclude: "An interferon alpha-2b plus ribavirin combination is more effective than 48 weeks of interferon alpha-2b monotherapy and has an acceptable safety profile."