TIME FOR TREATMENT?
A
new era in hepatitis C treatment dawned in May 2011. That’s when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two new meds, Incivek and Victrelis, each a protease inhibitor that fights the hepatitis C virus (HCV). For the past 20 years, the standard therapy to treat hep C offered most people the worst of both worlds—low success rates and often devastating side effects. Finally, hepatitis C treatment is emerging from its dark ages.
But despite the two new drugs’ promise to deliver improved cure rates, we haven’t quite reached a full treatment renaissance. Each new protease inhibitor (PI) must be taken in combination with the old treatments, potentially adding side effects. And the FDA hasn’t yet approved the PIs for people coinfected with HIV, so physicians who prescribe the hep C meds to HIV-positive patients must do so without full knowledge of the drugs’ challenges. For example, doctors
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and patients will need to navigate potential drug-drug interactions between these new PIs and HIV drugs. Additional excitement is in the pipeline. Even without a crystal ball, it seems clear that the next three to five years could bring an HCV care revolution like the one we’ve seen with HIV. We now have numerous classes of drugs fighting HIV in multiple ways, with simplified dosing schedules, reduced side effects and better disease management. The
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THE ODDS OF CURING HEP C ARE NOW BETTER THAN EVER.