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New antiviral therapies for chronic hepatitis C

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Abstract

Chronic hepatitis C is an important health issue worldwide. The current standard therapy is based on a combination of pegylated-interferon (pegIFN) and ribavirin (RBV), but this treatment leads to only ~50% sustained virological response (SVR) in patients with HCV genotype 1 and high viral loads, who were mostly null-responders or relapsers. Among HCV genotypes other than HCV genotype 1, especially HCV genotype 4 patients show only 40–70% SVR by this treatment. Although new drugs also depend on the combination of pegIFN and RBV, it appears that these drugs improve not only rapid virological response (RVR) but also early virological response, leading to SVR in these patients. In the near future, we predict higher SVR rates in chronic hepatitis C patients treated with these new drugs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Ranjit Ray and Ratna Ray, Saint Louis University, USA, for valuable discussions. This work was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan [21590829 (T.K.), 21590828 (F.I.), and 21390225 (O.Y.)] and by research grants from the Foundation for Advancement of International Science, Japan (T.K.) and the Viral Hepatitis Research Foundation of Japan (T.K.).

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  1. Department of Medicine and Clinical Oncology, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuo-ku, Chiba, 260-8677, Japan

    Tatsuo Kanda, Fumio Imazeki & Osamu Yokosuka

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  1. Tatsuo Kanda
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  2. Fumio Imazeki
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Correspondence to Tatsuo Kanda.

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Kanda, T., Imazeki, F. & Yokosuka, O. New antiviral therapies for chronic hepatitis C. Hepatol Int 4, 548–561 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12072-010-9193-3

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