treatment

[austin707]

Hey,
I'm kind of confused couldn't find any updated information on hepatitis c and its treatment so i found you guys. here is my question, do you know of any information showing the successes of treating genotype 1b? I just found thats my genotype, but i knew I had hepC for a while now. I would be thankful if you guys could guide me to the right direction.

Thanks

[austin707]

Thanks so much for the response.

I read the treatment varies depending on what kind of gentype you have.  They were very indirect with their results. As i said I have genotype 1b. I still dont really understand what 1a and 1b really means. Is 1b harder to be treated than 1a or viseversa. Im also willing to do any trails take one for the team. If you guys have any suggestion on that let me know

thanks

[FlGuy]

About a 50-50 shot by using the current standard of care meds, Interferon and Ribavirin for 48 weeks.

[fretboard]

Welcome,
Hey if you google pubmed and when you get to the search option enter hcv AND 1b AND svr you get 72 hits.  Here's just one of them, this is from a very recent study and alot of the information on pubmed is extremely current.  later

The use of different Peg-interferon alpha-2b regimens plus ribavirin in HCV-1b-infected patients after rapid virological response does not affect the achievement of sustained virological response.
Napoli N, Giannelli G, Antonaci A, Antonaci S.
Department of Internal Medicine, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Section of Internal Medicine, University of Bari Medical School, Bari, Italy. n.***@****

In patients with chronic hepatitis C, rapid virological response (RVR) at week 4 of treatment seems to be strongly associated with a high probability of achieving a sustained virological response (SVR). The aim of this study was to investigate the outcome of different pegylated interferon-alpha2b (Peg-IFN-alpha2b) dosages plus ribavirin (RBV) in patients with RVR. Forty-five naïve patients chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-1b started Peg-IFN-alpha2b (1.5 microg/kg/week) in combination with weight-based RBV doses (800-1200 mg/day). Thirty-one patients (68.9%) attained RVR at week 4 of therapy, while four further patients showed negative HCV-RNA values for the first time at week 12 and were considered early virological responders (EVR). The 31 RVR patients were randomized to receive either RBV plus 1.5 microg/kg/week (17 pts) or 1.0 microg/kg/week (14 pts) of Peg-IFN-alpha2b for the remaining 44 weeks. The two groups were matched for age, sex, baseline alanine aminotransferase levels, viral load and fibrosis score. After 6 months of post-treatment follow-up, the prevalence of SVR was 94.1% (16/17) among RVR patients treated with 1.5 microg/kg/week and 92.8% (13/14) in RVR patients treated with 1.0 microg/kg/week (P = not significant). A high-baseline viral load (P = 0.01) and bridging fibrosis/cirrhosis (P = 0.02) negatively influenced the likelihood of achieving RVR. On the contrary, the ability of RVR patients to achieve SVR did not correlate with these baseline characteristics in either of the treatment group. Finally, the SVR rate among EVR patients who responded after more than 4 weeks of treatment was significantly lower than among RVR patients (1/4 = 25%vs 29/31 = 93.5%; P = 0.0058), because of a high prevalence of post-treatment relapse among patients with EVR.

PMID: 18307592 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE