BACKGROUND Chronic hepatitis C affects approximately 170 million people worldwide, and thus being one of the main causes of chronic liver disease. About 20% of patients with chronic hepatitis C will develop cirrhosis over 20 years, and present an increased risk of developing hepatic complications. Sustained virological response (SVR) is associated with a better prognosis compared to untreated p...

BACKGROUND Current treatments for chronic hepatitis B are suboptimal. In the search for improved therapies, we compared the efficacy and safety of pegylated interferon alfa plus lamivudine, pegylated interferon alfa without lamivudine, and lamivudine alone for the treatment of hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive chronic hepatitis B. METHODS A total of 814 patients with HBeAg-positive chron...

BACKGROUND Peginterferon alfa-2a (40 kDa) is currently administered using a prefilled syringe. The peginterferon alfa-2a disposable autoinjector is a new safety-engineered device designed to facilitate injection and reduce the risk of needlestick injuries. The analysis of two open-label Phase I trials evaluated the pharmacokinetics, successful administration, and tolerability of peginterferon a...

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to determine the efficacy and safety of triple therapy with a first-generation protease inhibitor (PI; boceprevir, telaprevir) plus peginterferon alfa-2a or -2b plus ribavirin, and dual therapy (peginterferon alfa-2a or -2b plus ribavirin) in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) in routine clinical practice. METHODS PegBase was an international, prospect...

The likelihood of a sustained virological response (SVR) is the most important factor for physicians and patients in the decision to initiate and continue therapy for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) infection. This study identified predictive factors for SVR with peginterferon plus ribavirin (RBV) in patients with CHC treated under 'real-life' conditions. The study cohort consisted of patients from a...

BACKGROUND A multinational trial (APRICOT) showed that peginterferon alfa-2a (40kDa) plus ribavirin is efficacious for treatment of HIV-HCV co-infection. The cost-effectiveness of treating these patients with peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin has yet to be explored from a US societal perspective. OBJECTIVE To predict the cost-effectiveness of peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin with interferon/riba...

background egypt has one of the highest (16-8%) prevalence rates of hcv infection in the world. approximately 90% of egyptian hcv isolates belong to a single subtype (4a), which responds less successfully to interferon therapy than other subtypes. studies comparing the efficacy and safety of pegifn alfa-2a and pegifn alfa-2b in treatment-naive hcv-infected patients have shown conflicting result...

BACKGROUND Despite the introduction of direct-acting antiviral agents for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, peginterferon alfa/ribavirin remains relevant in many resource-constrained settings. The non-randomized GUARD-C cohort investigated baseline predictors of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations (sr-RD) and their impact on sustained virologic response (SVR) in patients...

Multicenter randomized trials have shown that once-weekly pegylated interferon (peginterferon) alfa-2a is more efficacious than conventional interferon alfa-2a (IFN) in patients with chronic hepatitis C. We performed a meta-analysis of 1,013 previously untreated patients (from 3 randomized trials) with pretreatment and post-treatment liver biopsies to assess the differences between peginterfero...

BACKGROUND Patients with genotype 1 hepatitis C virus (HCV) who do not have a sustained response to therapy with peginterferon alfa and ribavirin have a low likelihood of success with retreatment. METHODS We randomly assigned patients with HCV genotype 1 who had not had a sustained virologic response after peginterferon alfa-ribavirin therapy to one of four treatment groups: 115 patients to t...