GOOD NEWS for hepatitis C

Occasionally we are pleased to read news of hope

for millions of patients with chronic diseases such as the HCV virus and for years have been treated unsuccessfully at the cost of tremendous suffering side effects.

What is not so good, at all, and prevents many patients access to treatment is "price" with new therapies are discovered to treat this condition.

Recently published article that stressed the interest of all those affected by this disease.

 

Cure hepatitis C, infectious disease that primarily affects the liver and for years has killed more Americans than HIV and AIDS, is closer than ever. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University , U.S., have led the development of a simple and effective treatment against this disease, based on a new combination of drugs.

The study, published in the latest issue of " The New England Journal of Medicine "reveals that the combination of treatments involves a pair of oral-daclatasvir sofosbuvir-and antiviral drugs, still experimental, safer against hepatitis C. 


For authors, combination therapy has worked well, even in patients who are more difficult to treat, in which the 'triple therapy' with conventional protease inhibitors of hepatitis C-combining telaprevir or boceprevir drugs plus interferon and ribavirin, were unable to cure the infection.

"This research opens the way for other safer options, tolerable and effective for people infected with hepatitis C treatment," says Mark Sulkowski, medical director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Viral Hepatitis. " Standard treatments for the disease will improve dramatically in coming years , which will lead to unprecedented advances in the treatment of patients infected with the virus, "added study leader.

The study opens the way for other treatment options safer, tolerable and effective for people infected with hepatitis C

The research was conducted on 211 men and women with any of the three main types of the disease who were treated at 18 medical centers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Among patients with genotype 1, the most common strain of the infection in the U.S., 98% of 126 previously untreated patients and 98% of the 41 patients whose infections continued even after triple therapy were maintained without virus Blood detectable three months after the treatment had stopped. 

The results were similar to those infected with genotypes 2 or 3, less common strains in the country U.S. patients.

The study participants took a daily combination of 60 mg of daclatasvir (not yet approved in the U.S. or Europe) and 400 milligrams of sofosbuvir, with or without ribavirin.

Sulkowski stresses that if the declatasavir and other new drugs for hepatitis C have obtained approval from the health authorities, " the dreaded weekly injections of peginterferon be a thing of the past . "

Similarly, the expert points out that the so-called 'pill burden' standard for genotype 1 could lose about 18 pills a day and one injection per week to just one or two pills a day without injections.

Thus, the side effects of the new combination were generally mild, but include fatigue, headache and nausea, a security profile that compares favorably with the Sulkowski of pegylated interferon-based therapy, linked to serious side effects may include depression .

The side effects of the new combination were mild, but include fatigue, headache and nausea

In addition, the new study is one of the first to show that hepatitis C can be cured without the use of ribavirin, causing anemia.

Furthermore, the researcher adds that this new regime pills "should favor those infected with hepatitis C to cure, prevent the development of liver cancer and liver failure and obviate the need for a liver transplant . "

 

   

Currently, less than 5% of the approximately 3.2 million Americans with hepatitis C have been cured, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 


Additionally, the CDC estimates that between 50 and 75% of people living with chronic hepatitis C do not know they are infected.

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Make it early and effective is what they want millions affected, in addition to lower this much needed therapy globally.