Hepatitis C: The Pace of Progress
Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2013
Progress in Treating Hepatitis C Infection
Hello. I am Dr. Bill Balistreri, Professor at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. I am here at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) in Orlando, reporting for Medscape.
A major focus of the research and the state-of-the-art summaries presented here at DDW has been the pace of progress in developing new treatment strategies for hepatitis C. Speakers highlighted the fact that the agents and approaches for treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are in constant change and may, in fact, be in for an upgrade.
The standard of care for several years consisted of a combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin. With advanced understanding of the biology of HCV came the identification of specific proteins involved in its replication and the understanding that these proteins can be targeted by protease and polymerase inhibitors.
Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved 2 NS3 protease inhibitors -- telaprevir and boceprevir -- for the treatment of HCV genotype 1 in combination with standard therapy. Clinical trials of the 2 agents showed significantly improved sustained virologic response (SVR) rates in treatment-naive patients. Therefore, the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines were altered to recommend triple therapy consisting of a protease inhibitor (either telaprevir or boceprevir) plus peginterferon and ribavirin.....
Hello. I am Dr. Bill Balistreri, Professor at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. I am here at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) in Orlando, reporting for Medscape.
A major focus of the research and the state-of-the-art summaries presented here at DDW has been the pace of progress in developing new treatment strategies for hepatitis C. Speakers highlighted the fact that the agents and approaches for treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are in constant change and may, in fact, be in for an upgrade.
The standard of care for several years consisted of a combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin. With advanced understanding of the biology of HCV came the identification of specific proteins involved in its replication and the understanding that these proteins can be targeted by protease and polymerase inhibitors.
Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved 2 NS3 protease inhibitors -- telaprevir and boceprevir -- for the treatment of HCV genotype 1 in combination with standard therapy. Clinical trials of the 2 agents showed significantly improved sustained virologic response (SVR) rates in treatment-naive patients. Therefore, the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines were altered to recommend triple therapy consisting of a protease inhibitor (either telaprevir or boceprevir) plus peginterferon and ribavirin.....
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