engleski

Is the "lead-in" with PEG-interferon/ribavirin still reasonable?

Combination therapy with PEG-interferon (PEG-IFN), and ribavirin (RBV) has been the standard of care for genotype 1 CHC patients for 12 years. Many patients with different genotypes have been cured despite the well known side-effects. However the era of new direct acting antivirals that offer >90% efficacy, less side-effects and shorter duration of treatment has arrived. The main drawback is the extremely high-cost of those drugs. The 48-weeks treatment course with PEG-IFN+ribavirin is on average 5-8x cheaper then the cost of 12 weeks treatment with new direct acting antivirals without PEG-IFN (Sofosbuvir, ledipasvir, 3D combination). Shortenin the treatment course with PEG-IFN+ribavirin to 24 weeks this difference becomes even bigger. So, in lower-resource settings seems reasonable to look for interferon responders in naive patients.

PEG-interferon/ribavirin

nije evidentirano