Study: New Drug Combo May Cure Hepatitis C in Even the Sickest Patients

Local researcher who participated in national hepatitis C drug study available to comment on results published today in New England Journal of Medicine

Worldwide, 170 million people have chronic hepatitis C infection. As the population with the hepatitis C virus ages, the proportion of patients with symptomatic cirrhosis is expected to increase. Current oral medications do not work for all kinds (or genotypes) of the virus or in patients with advanced disease. Now, there is a combination of medications that works to cure patients infected with every genotype – even with advanced disease.

Jacqueline G. O’Leary, MD, MPH, transplant hepatologist and medical director of the Liver and Transplant Unit at the Annette C. and Harold C. Simmons Transplant Institute at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, was principal investigator locally for a study testing the new combination of medications for patients with hepatitis C and advanced cirrhosis.

This Gilead Sciences-funded phase 3, open-label trial, assessed the effectiveness and safety of sofosbuvir-velpatasvir plus ribavirin in patients with liver failure.  According to the results, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, 94% of patients were cured.

“It is amazing that in just 25 years Hepatitis C has gone from a disease with no diagnosis and no treatment, which can result in liver failure and liver cancer, to almost universally curable with short-duration, well-tolerated medication. This will certainly be touted as one of the great accomplishments of modern medicine in our life-time,” says Dr. O’Leary.

For many years, the only treatment option for patients with symptomatic cirrhosis was liver transplantation. Recently, however, clinical trials of newly approved direct-acting antiviral agents have demonstrated that it is possible to treat and cure hepatitis C safely and effectively in patients with decompensated cirrhosis in as few as 12 weeks, and that cure is associated with improvement in liver function.

Dr. O’Leary was one of four investigators conducting this study at Baylor Dallas, which was the No. 1 enrolling center for this multicenter trial, and was able to bring this life-changing medication to patients awaiting liver transplantation. One such patient had such significant improvement in liver function that he was no longer thought to need a liver transplant.


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