Retreatment of high-dose interferon (5 MU daily) nonresponders with high-dose IFN + ribavirin.

The treatment of chronic hepatitis C infection continues to evolve. Interferon (IFN) and ribavirin (RIBA) have become the mainstays of current therapy. The ideal dose and form of treatment of these two agents remains to be determined. An open label prospective trial of 5 MU of interferon daily plus ribavirin dosed according to weight was performed utilizing 40 patients, who were identified as being IFN nonresponders to 1 year or more of continuous IFN administered at a dose of 5 MU/day. Nineteen of the 40 subjects (47.5%) became HCV-RNA negative with normal serum ALT level when treated with the combination of IFN + RIBA. Thirteen of the 40 were sustained responders when reexamined after 6-12 months off active therapy. These results were achieved in a predominantly genotype 1 population (75%). This study suggests that the addition of RIBA to high-dose (5 MU daily) IFN can result in an increase in the number of cases experiencing both a short and sustained response to combination therapy.