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Boceprevir, New Hepatitis C Drug, in New England Journal of Medicine Today

The HCV community is familiar with the great articles published on Dr. Joe Galati's blog  and the discussions about HCV, wellness and the liver on his radio show. If you haven't visited one or the other you'll find them both interesting, and informative.

Dr. Joe Galati is attending the European Association For The Study Of Liver Disease, and yesterday on his blog he wrote an article covering all the buzz at the meeting. He also commented on the two boceprevir studies recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, you can view the studies here and here.   

Here is an excerpt from the article;
 

The two New England Journal of Medicine articles are quite different. One of them focuses on patients that have previously been treated and analyze their response to a triple course of therapy including interferon, ribavirin, and Boceprevir. In the coming months, this triple therapy will be the new standard of care for patients with genotype 1 hepatitis C. For the non-medical person, reading the articles can be quite daunting. The key points are as follow: (1) patients that were previously treated and had a good response to interferon and ribavirin, but unfortunately relapsed after discontinuation of drug, had a very high response rate to triple therapy, in the order of 75%. (2) those that were previously treated but had less than a full response, still were able to see a significant rise in their viral response in the order of 30-50%. This is a significant increase from retreatment with medications they previously received. The dosing of the 3 drugs will be an issue that both physicians and patients, who will need to learn about the protocol designs. In the studies, there was a 4 week lead in with interferon and ribavirin alone, followed by the initiation of Boceprevir after the initial 4 week.


In the study looking at patient’s naïve to antiviral therapy, the triple therapy with Boceprevir had a sustained virologic response of approximately 68%. There were differences between the between the black and caucasian patients, and this difference will continue to be looked at. This study also had a 4 week lead in, administering interferon and ribavirin prior to the Boceprevir. In this particular study, the design was such that the patient’s who exhibited an early response to therapy, had a shortert total length of treatment.

 
He also mentioned side effects and his concern for the careful monitoring these drugs will require.... Continue Reading.................