Clinical trial: extended treatment duration of peginterferon‐alpha2b plus ribavirin for 72 and 96 weeks in hepatitis C genotype 1‐infected late responders

Summary Background The benefits of prolonging peginterferon and ribavirin after 48 weeks of treatment to maximize sustained virological responses (SVR) in hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1‐infected patients remain to be understood. Aim To investigate whether extended treatment longer than 72 weeks may be superior to 72‐week treatment. Methods A total of 120 treatment‐naïve or retreated patients with HCV genotype 1 were treated with peginterferon‐alpha‐2b (1.5 μg/kg/week) plus weight‐based ribavirin. We had 34 late responders, in whom HCV RNA first became undetectable at week 12–48, and randomized them into three groups receiving standard‐dose peginterferon‐alpha‐2b plus low‐dose ribavirin (200 mg/day) for extended 24 weeks (group A), receiving low‐dose peginterferon‐alpha‐2b (0.75 μg/kg/week) plus low‐dose ribavirin for extended 48 weeks (group B) or no extended treatment (group C), and evaluated the outcome according to their virological response. Results Multivariate analysis showed that the treatment for 96 weeks was identified as a significant, independent factor associated with SVR in HCV genotype 1‐infected late responders in comparison with group A [odds ratio (OR), 10.002; P = 0.080] and group C (OR, 17.748; P = 0.025). Conclusion Extending the treatment duration from 48 weeks to 96 weeks improves SVR rates in genotype 1‐infected patients with late virological response to peginterferon‐alpha‐2b and ribavirin.