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Home | Medical | Drugs

New Drugs for Dealing with Hepatitis C, Cirrhosis and Liver Disease

By: Joe Healy

Vertex Pharmaceuticals has produced an new experimental medication which has assisted more than 60 percent of people infected with a resistant form of Hepatitis C, according to research which will be made public at a medical summit beginning today.

Related Times Health Guide: Hepatitis C

The results, eagerly awaited by Wall Street as well as by doctors, represent the highest cure rate yet reported for the condition--and the treatment was accomplished in half the usual time.

Vertex, however, may not stand alone in the spotlight since Romark Laboratories, though a small privately held company, already sells Alina, a drug that has been used to treat diarrhea caused by parasites but that is now being looked at as a possible treatment for hepatitis C.

Researchers are to report in a presentation about Alinia who helped cure about 79 percent of hepatitis C patients with a type of virus easier to treat than the type Vertex, escaped the attention of Wall Street which is to be presented at the same meeting.

The doctor said that there would be a skeptical reaction to to the unusual source. Emmet B. Keeffe, chief of hepatology at Stanford, who is a consultant to Romark. Physician do I have to It is pretty exciting when you overcome your own initial skepticism, said Keeffe.The experts have already said that each of the categories must be follow by bigger trials. But the progress could be important for patients. It is believed that Hepatitis C affects almost three million Americans and instances of liver cirrhosis and liver cancer triggered by the virus are on the rise.

The current treatment of alpha interferon and ribavirin can cause debilitating side effects such as flu-like symptoms, anemia, and depression. The treatment for type 1 hepatitis C, the hard-to-treat form that accounts for 70 percent of the cases in the United States, takes nearly a year.

So the hunt for new drugs has been intense, and Vertex, a publicly traded company based in Cambridge, Mass., is widely acknowledged as the front-runner. In pill form it is labeled telaprevir or VX-950, and it works by interfering with a viral enzyme. It is a new proposal for hepatitis C, but this is how the majority of AIDS drugs work.

New information expected to be presented at the forthcoming meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases which is held in Boston, will demonstrate evidence that telaprevir, which has previously been shown to decrease virus levels in the bloodstream, could cure many patients.

In a mid stage trial in the United States of 250 previously untreated patients, 61 percent of the people who received telaprevir in addition to the two standard drugs had no detectable virus in their blood 24 weeks after the end of the treatment, a Vertex executive said. The effective cure is considered by Doctor's In a European trial of 323 patients, about 65 percent of those who got the three-drug combination had no detectable virus 12 weeks after the end of treatment.

The typical cure rate for standard drugs alone is now 40 to 50 percent for type 1 hepatitis C, but using these two new drugs have actually gotten higher results. Doctors also thought it was important that the treatment itself lasted only 24 weeks instead of 48. That means patients would have to endure the side effects of interferon and ribavirin for a shorter time.

"These are spectacular achievements', exclaimed Dr. Ira M. Jacobson, who is affiliated with Weill Cornell Medical College and also consults to Vertex, is scheduled to present the results of the American trial during the meeting.

Wall Street was expecting these figures so it wasn't a big surprise. In addition, numerous individuals receiving these drugs discontinued taking them due to side effects, compared to people receiving the customary treatment. The rate of cures resulting from the standard therapy used in trials is not yet available.
Romark's data comes from a study done in Egypt in which the patient sample was limited to a mere 96 previously untreated individuals. Another thing that has aslo been tested as a possible treatment to parasites is ALinia, which is also known as nitazoxanide.

In just 12 weeks after finishing their care of Alinia and two other standard drugs, 79 percent no longer had the virus. That compared with 43 percent in the control group receiving the standard treatment. Although patients were treated for 48 weeks, they received both medications for only 36.

In the United States, type 4 hepatitis C is rare, but these patients were diagnosed with it. A few experts responded with the theory that Type 4 may be easier to treat then type 1 Romark, which is based in Tampa, Fla.A trial is beginning in the United States with about $20 million in annual revenue. We will begin a trial in the United States with an annual revenue of about $20 million.
It was sheer serendipity that the drug's efficacy combating hepatitis C was found out. In clinical tests for treatment of parasites, the drug showed signs that it was effective against liver infection.

Dr. Alinia is already on market and appear to have some side effects. Keffe is researching how the Romark drug works and is saying that some doctors might prescribe Alinia off label to treat hepatitis C. It costs about $30 a day for the two pills needed. Doctors can prescribe medicines for uses not approved by the FDA, but it is illegal for drug manufacturers to market them for off-label uses before they approved for such uses.

"We're all looking for better therapy for our patients and this looks like a very benign thing to do." Physician Keeffe MD said.

Article Source: http://bytepowered.org/articles

Joe Healy is an expert on Hepatitis C.

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