Ribavirin in combination therapy for HCV chronic infection in HIV patients: How to win the war after winning the first battle?>

摘要

Pegylated interferon plus ribavirin combination therapy is the standard of care not only in monoinfected patients but also in patients coinfected with chronic hepatitis C (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Efficacy of combination therapy was recently evidenced in these HCV/HIV coinfected patients by several randomized clinical trials using either peginterferon alfa-2a (APRICOT, ACTG A5071 , and PRESCO or peginterferon alfa-2b (RIBA VIC and the Carg-nel et al. study ). However, successful treatment outcome is substantially lower in coinfected patients than in mono-infected ones, ranging from 27% to 49% overall and from 14% to 36% for genotype 1 patients. Consequently, understanding the reasons why only few coinfected patients achieve successful treatment outcome will help to optimize the treatment for this particular patient group. It is definitely a major clinical challenge.