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Cure for Hepatitis C

Better chances of achieving a cure for the deadly Hepatitis C brings patients high on hopes as a breakthrough triple therapy treatment is now being offered in the country.

With the arrival of boceprevir, Hepatatis C patients, especially those who are genotype 1 will have an increase in their response rates.

The standard treatment for the disease is composed of a combination of an injectable drug that enhances an adaptive immune response called peg-interferon and an oral drug that attacks the Hepatitis C virus in the body called ribavirin.

For naïve patients (those undergoing treatment for the first time), the triple therapy almost doubles the chance of achieving virologic cure rates (or sustained virologic response (SVR), based on results of a clinical trial.

According to UST Hospital-based gastroenterologist, Dr. Joey Sollano, these new combinations give the patient the capacity to shorten treatment.

"When they (the patients) have been treated for a year in the past, they can actually have their treatment shortened," Sollano said.

"[Those] who have had the virus controlled in four weeks and continue to have good control in eight weeks, can continue to have treatment for only 28 weeks or 6 months," he added. "There's a lot of hope for [the cure to] Hepatitis C."

Sollano explained that there were even new combinations for the treatment to last only for 16 weeks and even 12 weeks.

But all treatments had downsides, Sollano explained, one of which was that not all patients responded according to what is expected. In some cases there are also side effects.

Also, the possibility of relapse is always there, but he said that with the new combinations available, there exists a chance for relapse to minimize.

The cost of the treatment has yet to be disclosed but the cost in the US is about $ 1, 100 per week, he said.

Hepatitis C, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a contagious liver disease.

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