Curing hepatitis C with pills: a step toward global control.

摘要

We are on the eve of a new era in hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment. For the first two decades after the virus was discovered, only ribavirin and interferon-alfa-related compounds were approved for HCV treatment, and nearly a decade has passed since the last substantive upgrade. During the same two-decade interval, 24 new compounds from six classes were approved for treatment of HIV. However, the long wait for new HCV treatments is about to end. Clinical trials are now underway for multiple compounds from each of at least five novel classes, and data have already been published or disclosed for drugs scheduled for release in 2011 that suggest sustained response rates might go as high as 75%, even for the most difficult to treat genotype 1 infections. In view of the drugs that will follow, in the foreseeable future nearly all those who are treated might be cured.