New Treatment Recommended for Asian Chronic Hepatitis C Patients
The Chinese University of Hong Kong recently made public the results of its three-year study, which evaluated the use of interferon beta-1a and its combination with ribavirin in the treatment of Asian chronic Hepatitis C patients. Find out how it compares to the existing peginterferon-alfa based therapy.
New treatment for chronic hepatitis C leads to less side effects: study
August 14, 2007
http://english.people.com.cn
A study result made public Monday by the Chinese University of Hong Kong reveals that combination of interferon beta-1a and ribavirin treatment for chronic hepatitis C creates less side effects.
Chronic hepatitis C is an important cause of liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. Currently, the standard treatment of chronic hepatitis C is combination of peginterferon-alfa and ribavirin, which, however, leads to common adverse effects including fever and flu-like symptoms, injection site reaction, depression and bone marrow suppression. This decreases patients' compliance and in turn reduces the treatment effect, the university said.
The university hence carried out a three-year study to assess the use of interferon beta-1a and its combination with ribavirin in the treatment of Asian chronic hepatitis C patients.
About 250 Asian chronic hepatitis C patients with active disease were recruited and randomly assigned into two groups which received placebo treatment and interferon beta-1a plus ribavirin combination treatment respectively for 12 weeks, it said.
The result shows that interferon beta-1a and ribavirin combination treatment can achieve a similar rate of viral clearance but a low rate of adverse event and patient discontinuation as compared to the existing peginterferon-alfa based treatment.
The university recommended that interferon-beta-1 and ribavirin combination treatment be considered as an alternative to the existing peginterferon-alfa based therapy for Asian patients with chronic hepatitis C infection.
Source: Xinhua