In October, the FDA approved a drug that can treat hepatitis C faster and with fewer side effects. Additionally, more effective drugs are on the way.
“Many companies are trying to develop other drugs that are easier to administer and more costly,” says Thomas D. Boyer, MD.he is the director of liver Laboratory at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson.
latest approved drugs, Harvoni (ledipasvir and sofosbuvir) are once-daily treatments. Hepatitis C It takes 8, 12, or 24 weeks (depending on the individual) to see results, but some mild side effects occur. Before Harvoni was approved, most patients Hepatitis C necessary interferon, a drug that is combined with a pill and injected once a week. This was not an ideal treatment. People don't like to inject themselves, and interferon has serious side effects, such as fever. nausea, and depression. Currently, most patients with hepatitis C can take Harvoni instead of interferon.
“These are very exciting times. Treatment of hepatitis C,“ said Dr. Jonathan M. Fenkel, director of the Hepatitis C Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. „Harvoni is an excellent drug with a high cure rate and few side effects. One pill per day makes it very easy to take for most patients.“
Within the next year, the FDA needs to approve three or four drugs that can treat it. hepatitis C with the mouth instead of the needle. And more is expected over the next two years. Like Harvoni, every pill has a combination of two or more drugs.
„This is a cocktail therapy of many drugs that target different viral proteins,“ says virologist Dr. Stephen J. Poliak. He is a research professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. „The more we can attack the virus and bring it down and attack it in multiple locations, the more we can keep the virus in check.“
Because the hepatitis C virus can mutate, one drug alone cannot cure the disease; two or more drugs are needed.
„They all attack the virus at different sites,“ Boyer said. „You can't give hepatitis C a single drug. It will just mutate and become resistant.“
old, standard Treatment of hepatitis C (Interferon and pills) weren't cheap, but Harvoni's cost was even higher, about $100,000 per person. Currently, insurance companies only approve Harvoni for the most critically ill patients. Doctors believe prices will drop as new drugs are approved.
„As more drugs come out, the hope is that competition will drive prices down,“ Fenkel said. „The big challenge is making this treatment available to everyone. Most patients cannot afford it out of pocket.“
Researchers continue to search for new ways to treat hepatitis C. Their goal is to create drugs that cure diseases more quickly and with fewer side effects.
„If one pill a day could cure this disease in four weeks instead of eight or 12 weeks, that would be great,“ Fenkel said.
So far, hepatitis C treatments target the virus itself, but research is underway to develop new drugs that target the virus's host cells.
„There are two ways to prevent the virus from replicating: you can target the virus or you can target the cell,“ Poliak said. „Hepatitis C can mutate and cause resistance to drugs that target the virus. In theory, for drugs that target cells, the development of drug-resistant viruses would be less of a problem. It won’t.”
There are different types of hepatitis C. In the United States, most people have a type called genotype 1, but some people have genotypes 2 or 3. Currently available drugs can only target one genotype at a time. Future drugs will likely be able to treat all hepatitis C genotypes.
„We're going to try to find one pill for every person with hepatitis C,“ said Nora A. Tello, MD, director of the Center for Viral Hepatitis at the University of California, San Francisco. “It brings one drug cocktail to a wide range of patients.”
Within the next five to 10 years, researchers may be able to develop a vaccine for hepatitis C. vaccine Combined with drugs, it may help eradicate the disease. Medicines could cure sick people, and vaccines could prevent more people from getting sick.
„This is an active area of research,“ Poliak says. „No infectious disease has been eradicated globally through drug treatment alone. To do that, we need a vaccine.“