What's The Treatment? - 1
Sorry, there is no miracle cure. The best medical science has to offer is a chemotherapy of injection drugs and pills you take for either 24 or 48 weeks, depending on your HCV genotype. These drugs have about a 33% initial success rate at the end of treatment; however, 50% relapse when therapy is discontinued. The final score shows only a 15% success rate, which is based on being virus free six months after treatment. There is no long-term follow up for recurrence since the disease and medicine are recently discovered. Even with this low response rate, the expense for the medication costs from $1,800 to $3,500 per month. That's a lot of money for treatment with only a 15% success rate!
The majority of patients complained of flu-like symptoms while on treatment. Approximately 10-15% of patients have to discontinue medication because of side effects. Major side effects include: psychiatric disorders in 36%, hair loss in 30%, and shortness of breath in 14%. Various other side effects include: anemia, fatigue, sleep disorders, headache, fever, muscle pains, general body aches, chills, nausea, etc.
There's a newer treatment that has not yet been approved in Canada, Peg-Intron. A similar treatment, Pegasys, is being tested in the US. These new drugs have a higher success rate, 11-49%; unfortunately, one of the side effects is attempted and successful suicide both during treatment and upon quitting the medication. Other side effects include heart attack, dangerously low levels of white blood cells and platelets, plus damage to other body organs. This drug is still undergoing testing in Canada before being approved for naive (untreated) patients. The initial success rate shows about 40% in carefully selected test subjects with HCV their only health factor. For more information on current treatments, please visit Schering's Hepatitis Innovations or Roche Pharmaceuticals.
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