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The science world is working hard at finding new cures and treatments for cancers and other incurable illnesses and just today we’ve written about some of the latest cancer news which reveals that copper starvation seems to be a promising treatment for certain cancers. Now, one of the greatest news ever to hit StatesChronicle.com is here: a new Interferon-free treatment for Hep C cured 90% of patients. You read that right, the patients were cured, there was no sign sing of the virus in their blood.
Interferon-Free Treatment for Hep C Cured 90% of Patients
More than three million Americans are affected by Hepatitis C, which is the number one cause for liver cirrhosis and liver cancer in the United States. A new study conducted by a team led by Fred Poordad, from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, has revealed that a combination of interferon-free, well-tolerated drugs, has cured over 90% of patients with liver cirrhosis in 12 weeks.
This new study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and it is of extreme importance in the medical world. The most common treatment for hepatitis C patients with cirrhosis (liver scarring) is interferon, which works on less than half of all the patients. Many of patients who have liver cirrhosis are not even eligible to be treated with interferon, because the medicine is very badly tolerated and it isn’t safe for use in people with cirrhosis, as it is very toxic.
The interferon-free treatment for Hep C cured 90% of patients and the combination of medicine contains: ribavirin, dasabuvir, ABT-450/ritonavir and ombitasvir, in short Turquoise-II.
The new drug was given to 380 patients who had Hep C virus infection and also cirrhosis. They were aged between 18 and 70 and were recruited between the fall of 2012 and the spring of 2013 at almost 80 hospitals in Canada, Germany, Spain, England and the US.
The drug was so effective that the 91.8% of the patients didn’t even have traces of the Hep C virus in their bloodstream, 12 weeks after their last dose. 95.9% were Hep C virus free 24 weeks after their last dose.
The scientists will continue to test the blood of the patients to make sure that there are no relapses, but the news that the new interferon-free treatment for Hep cured 90% of patients is the some of the best news in the last decade.
Hepatitis C is now curable with a well-tolerated and short regimen. The new treatment will be available late this year or early 2015.
