JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- All patients with hepatitis C
who receive a liver transplant will eventually infect their new livers.
These transplanted organs then require anti-viral treatment before they
become severely damaged. But traditional post-transplant hepatitis C
therapy can take up to a year, is potentially toxic and can lead to
organ rejection.
Now, at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases
(The Liver Meeting® 2014) in Boston, researchers at Mayo Clinic report
that use of two new oral medications post-transplant is safe and
beneficial, and requires only 12 weeks of treatment.
"This is the first study to examine the use of these two new drugs
-- simeprevir and sofosbuvir -- in liver transplant recipients, and,
based on this large study, we find it to be a better option than current
treatment," says the study's lead researcher, Surakit Pungpapong, M.D., a transplant hepatologist and an associate professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Florida.
Read more... Labels: AASLD 2014, post-transplant, Simeprevir + sofosbuvir