Over 90% cure rate for hepatitis C without the use of interferon

Hepatitis C is a chronic and sometimes deadly illness, that is usually transmitted through blood and has historically been very hard to treat. Up until a few years ago the gold standard of treatment was a cocktail of drugs that included interferon, a drug which had really bad flu like side effects and low cure rates of less than 50%. Luckily the future for patients with Hep C is now much brighter

Recently, the landscape for Hep C treatment has been changing, with the onset of Direct Acting Antivirals. A new study has shown a 90% cure rate, without the use of interferon. The turquoise-ii trail used a combination of direct acting oral treatments. It was tested in over 380 patients with the most common and serious, as well as hard to treat genotype , genotype 1.

With Hepatitis C we consider a patient cured, when no virus can be found in the blood 12 weeks after treatment. In this study 95.9% of patients were found to have no virus at the end of a 24 week follow up period. Results like these have never before been seen in hepatitis C treatment and way exceeds any expectations. Just a few years ago less than half of our patients could be cured. Now there are more and more treatments becoming available, that have cure rates in the 90% and in some cases even 100%.

The good news is that the cure rates seem to be the same for HIV/Hep C co infected patients and also people who already have liver fibrosis and/or cirrhosis . In some of the studies cures have been achieved with as little as 8 weeks of treatment. Now, if we could just get as many people as possible on treatments, we could really put a dent in the high rates of Hepatitis C that we are currently seeing.