The Los Angeles Times (3/27, Healy, 692K) reports that research, published Wednesday on the New England Journal of Medicine's website, "may represent a breakthrough in the treatment of hepatitis C infection." Weekly injections of miravirsen "drove down subjects' viral loads after five weeks of treatment," and fourteen weeks after the injections ended "five of 18 infected subjects getting the medication's higher doses showed no detectable trace of infection." Miravirsen functions by binding to messenger proteins in liver cells that "the hepatitis C virus needs to survive and replicate."
NPR (3/27, Doucleff) reports in its "Shots" blog, "Doctors have been desperate for better treatment options" for hepatitis C. While study lead Dr. Harry Janssen warned that a larger study will be needed to determine "how effective miravirsen is compared to current hepatitis C treatments," as the research sought "to figure out how much miravirsen is needed to stop the virus temporarily - not it's overall effectiveness." However, "the study is still drawing attention because it offers proof-of-concept for a whole new class of drugs, called RNA interference drugs."
HealthDay (3/28, Salamon) reports miravirsen "could potentially be part of a drug 'cocktail' that manages the hepatitis C virus in much the same way as similar combinations have transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic, manageable condition." Dr. Judy Lieberman, chairwoman of cellular and molecular medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, who co-wrote aneditorial accompanying the new study, said, "What's exciting to me is that there doesn't seem to be any drug resistance developing," but added, "It's too early to tell."
The MedPage Today (3/28, Smith) also covers this story.
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