New antiviral therapies for chronic hepatitis C.

Chronic hepatitis C is an important health issue worldwide. The current standard therapy is based on a combination of pegylated-interferon (pegIFN) and ribavirin (RBV), but this treatment leads to only ~50% sustained virological response (SVR) in patients with HCV genotype 1 and high viral loads, who were mostly null-responders or relapsers. Among HCV genotypes other than HCV genotype 1, especially HCV genotype 4 patients show only 40-70% SVR by this treatment. Although new drugs also depend on the combination of pegIFN and RBV, it appears that these drugs improve not only rapid virological response (RVR) but also early virological response, leading to SVR in these patients. In the near future, we predict higher SVR rates in chronic hepatitis C patients treated with these new drugs.