SAN FRANCISCO – Patients with hepatitis C who fail short-course antiviral treatment may still be able to achieve a cure using longer-duration therapies plus ribavirin, a small study has demonstrated.
The C-SWIFT study, an earlier trial of HCV patients undergoing a 4-week, triple-therapy regimen with sofosbuvir, elbasvir, and grazoprevir, resulted in a cure rate of only about 40% – not the result for which the researchers had hoped.
So, “the idea of this current trial was to take those patients and put them on a regimen that would ultimately give them sustained virologic response or virologic cure,” explained Dr. Eric Lawitz of the Texas Liver Institute, San Antonio. “Within these shortened durations, could we re-treat the patients with the same regimen, extending therapy to 12 weeks and adding ribavirin?”
In an interview at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, Dr. Lawitz discussed the study’s findings and whether retreatment can deliver a cure in patients who’d earlier failed with shorter treatment regimens.