Hepatitis C Treatment Breakthrough

HEALTH, 30 May 2011

Kate Hagan – The Age, Australia

March 15, 2011

A NEW treatment for hepatitis C trialed in patients at The Alfred hospital has cut debilitating side effects and reduced treatment times, creating the potential for many more patients to be cured of the disease.

About 250,000 Australians have hepatitis C but only 5 per cent choose to have the current treatment due to multiple side-effects such as psychotic episodes, depression, insomnia and muscle aches and pains.

Current treatment involves weekly injections of interferon – a protein that fights the virus but causes the side effects – as well as twice-daily tablets for up to seven weeks.

But researchers have found that a combination drug without interferon is even more effective, curing some patients of the disease within two weeks in a recent trial.

The study, published in The Lancet and funded by the drug company Roche, involved 88 patients from six hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, including The Alfred.

The Alfred hospital’s director of gastroenterology, Associate Professor Stuart Roberts, said the success of the combination drug – which inhibits enzymes that cause the virus to multiply – was an exciting breakthrough.

About 70 per cent of people with hepatitis C develop a chronic form of the virus. One-fifth of those patients develop cirrhosis – a scarring of the liver that can lead to cancer.

The blood-borne virus can be spread by sharing drug-injecting equipment such as needles, through needlestick injuries in healthcare settings, or from blood transfusions before 1990 that may not have been screened for the virus.

”The interferon-free treatment … will see a lot more people taking up treatment because of the lack of major side effects,” Professor Roberts said.

”It may also open up opportunities to increase treatment outside specialist centres in the hospitals because there is less requirement for intensive care and monitoring of patients.

”Introducing this treatment as standard practice is a few years off, but this study provides a proof of concept that it can be effective,” he said.

While the current treatment produces a 50 per cent cure rate, Professor Roberts said the new treatment may be up to 80 per cent effective and would be used far more widely.

”At the moment many patients elect to manage themselves conservatively and don’t undergo treatment,” he said.

”Treatment, when successful, can not only arrest the progression of the disease but often it will reduce in severity as the liver remodels itself.”

Hepatitis C infections have increased in Victoria, with 662 new cases reported by doctors during the second quarter of 2009 – 25 per cent more than in the same period in 2008.

Go to Original – theage.com.au

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