Effective therapy announced for HIV-HCV coinfected adults

Adults coinfected with HIV and hepatitis C have a much better chance of clearing the hepatitis virus from their bodies through a new treatment combining Roche's Pegasys with the antiviral drug ribavirin, BBC News reports. Researchers speaking at the 11th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco report that a study of more than 800 coinfected patients in 19 countries showed the combination therapy cleared HCV from 40% of the study participants, compared with just 12% of study subjects receiving conventional treatments. "These groundbreaking data...show the greatest chance of a cure ever seen" in coinfected patients, said Ed Wilkins, an infectious diseases expert at England's North Manchester General Hospital. Pegasys, a long-lasting form of interferon, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of hepatitis in October 2002. It has been studied in combination with ribavirin for the past year. The study presented at the San Francisco conference is one of the first to study whether the combination treatment was safe and effective for patients also infected with HIV.