The Predictive Value of On-treatment Virological Response for Sustained Virological Response in Chronic Hepatitis C
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2011-09-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
The efficacy of combination antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis C is influenced by many
factors. Important patient-specific factors include, age, gender, race, body weight.
Important virus-specific factors include HCV genotype and serum HCV RNA level. Finally,
important treatment-related factors include the type of interferon, dose of ribavirin and the
duration and adherence to treatment.
Despite the importance of patient- and virus-specific factors, the most important indicator
of treatment success is a rapid, profound and sustained decrease in serum HCV RNA levels
after the start of treatment.
The on-treatment virological response can thus be used to predict the probability that a
given patient will achieve an SVR if they remain on therapy. It can also be used to
individualize the duration of treatment.
In this study, treatment for patients with chronic hepatitis C was individualized on the
basis of clinical characteristics and the on-treatment virological response. The aim was to
investigate the usefulness of undetectable HCV RNA levels at week 4 (RVR) and 12 in tailoring
the duration of treatment and predicting SVR in Chinese patients with chronic hepatitis C.