View clinical trials related to Hepatitis B, Chronic.
Filter by:The investigators' pilot study indicates that hepatitis C virus (HCV)- and hepatitis B virus (HBV)-coinfected patients with predominantly active hepatitis C and those with predominantly active hepatitis B may need different anti-viral regimens. Since in the majority of these coinfected patients the hepatitis activity is more likely due to HCV than to HBV, the optimal therapeutic regimen for HCV- and HBV-coinfected patients with predominantly active hepatitis C will first be investigated. The combination therapy using pegylated interferons (IFNs) such as PEG-IFN alfa-2a has been shown to have a superior efficacy than that using conventional IFN in the treatment of monoinfected chronic hepatitis C. This new combination therapy might also further enhance the treatment efficacy in HCV- and HBV- coinfected patients. The investigators therefore propose to initiate a trial comparing the efficacy of pegylated IFN plus ribavirin (RBV) in dual chronic hepatitis B and C versus that in chronic hepatitis C only, for both HCV genotype 1 and 2/3 patients. The efficacy using a 24-week combination therapy in the sustained clearance of serum HCV RNA is equivalent to that using a 48-week combination therapy in patients with HCV genotype non-1 [Hadziyannis et al, EASL 2002]. A 48-week course of pegylated IFN and RBV combination therapy, in contrast, has been shown to yield a better efficacy in the sustained clearance of serum HCV RNA in patients with HCV genotype 1 than a 24-week combination therapy in western countries [Hadziyannis et al, EASL 2002; Poynard et al, 1998]. The primary objective of the current proposal is to investigate and compare the efficacy of combination therapy using pegylated IFN plus RBV on the clearance of serum HCV RNA in both dually infected patients with a dominant HCV infection and HCV monoinfected patients. Therefore, in this proposal, the treatment duration will be 24 weeks for HCV genotype 2/3 in patients with dual chronic hepatitis C and B and in patients with monoinfected HCV, and will be 48 weeks for HCV genotype 1 in patients with dual chronic hepatitis C and B and in patients with monoinfected HCV.
The treatment of choice for chronic hepatitis D is uncertain. The investigators hypothesize that pegylated interferon (IFN) alfa-2b in combination with ribavirin (RBV) may be effective in the treatment of chronic hepatitis D patients who are also infected by hepatitis B virus (HBV). The purpose of this study is to test this hypothesis. The investigators will use pegylated IFN alfa-2b in combination with RBV for the treatment of patients with dual chronic hepatitis D virus (HDV) and HBV infection. A 24-week course of combination therapy pegylated IFN+RBV will be used.