Shorter hepatitis
C treatment may be possible

It may be possible for some adults infected with hepatitis C to take just three months of drug treatment as opposed to the standard six-month regimen, The Washington Post reports. Researchers in Italy reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that HCV patients taking Schering-Plough's Peg-Intron injections and Rebetol pills who had no detectable HCV viral levels after 12 weeks of treatment could safely stop treatment at that point instead of taking an additional 12 weeks of injections and pills. Of the 132 patients who stopped treatment at 12 weeks, drug side effects were significantly lower than in the 45 patients studied who took a full six-month course of therapy. Hepatitis C is a common coinfection among HIV-positive adults. Some studies have shown that as many as one quarter of all HIV patients in the United States are coinfected with HCV and as many as half of HIV-positive injection-drug users also carry HCV. As many as 5 million Americans are currently infected with HCV; worldwide, there are an estimated 200 million people with hepatitis C.