Posted on November 01, 2013
Source: Scientific American
For decades, people with hepatitis C virus (HCV) have had to endure gruelling treatment regimens that include injections of the drug interferon, which can cause severe nausea and depression. But with the imminent approval of several highly effective oral antiviral drugs, and more on the way, researchers say that eradicating the infection worldwide is now a realistic goal.
Unlike previous HCV treatments, which sought to enhance the immune system with interferon and other drugs, the latest group of oral medications interferes with the virus’s ability to replicate and make proteins. A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) board recommended two such drugs—simeprevir, made by Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and sofosbuvir from Gilead Sciences in Foster City, California—for approval last week. When each is taken in combination with a drug called ribavirin, the treatment eliminates hepatitis C in around 80 percent of people.
“This is the first time in the history of humankind that we have a cure for a viral disease,” says pharmacologist Raymond Schinazi of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
