[Advance of technical method and treatment in viral hepatitis]
April 12th, 2008 | by admin |[Advance of technical method and treatment in viral hepatitis]
The dominant treatment used currently for hepatitis B is administration of interferon for 6 months or long-term administration of nucleic-acid analogs. However, since the response rate to interferon treatment is approximately only 30%, nucleic acid analogs are used primarily for the treatment of hepatitis B in our country. Among the nucleic-acid analogs, entecavir is associated with the lowest rate of emergence of mutants (approximately 3% for 3 years). On the other hand, combination therapy with interferon plus ribavirin is predominantly used in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C, and the response rate is approximately 50% in cases with genotype 1b infection and high viral loads and 90% in cases with genotype 2a/2b and high viral loads. Moreover, because interferon monotherapy has been shown to be associated with a 70% response rate in subjects with low viral loads regardless of the genotype, combined Peg-IFN plus ribavirin therapy and interferon monotherapy are mainly used for hepatitis C patients with high and low viral loads, respectively. beta-interferon is mainly used for preventing the development of cancer in patients with compensated cirrhosis, in addition to its use in cirrhosis patients with genotype 1b infection and high viral loads.
Kumada H.
Department of Hepatology, Toranomon Hospital, Kawasaki.