Hepatitis C: The Potential Therapy for Hepatitis C

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Introduction
Hepatitis C is a chronic liver disease that is caused by an infection from hepatitis C virus (HCV). The hepatitis C virus is an RNA virus that belongs to the Hepacivirus genus of the Flaviviridae family (Lauer and Walker, 2001). Nearly 170 million people are chronically infected by this virus, which represents approximately 3% of the world population (Mohd Hanafiah et al., 2013). Chronic hepatitis C can lead to other serious liver diseases such as hepatocellular carcinoma and liver cirrhosis (Zazrin et al., 2013). For this reason, hepatitis C is regarded as one of the major global health problems. Hepatitis C is an asymptomatic disease in which shows no signs or symptoms and the infected patients usually are unaware about the disease. To date, there is no rapid and effective vaccination or treatment with zero side effects to cure hepatitis C.
There are a few approved treatments available to reduce the effect of hepatitis C on liver; however, the efficiencies are not guaranteed 100%. Therefore, I will further discuss the efficiency of the approved treatments for hepatitis C in this bibliography and my final literature review. I will also emphasize on the different type of treatments available to lower down the risks of liver damage caused by hepatitis C.
This article provides the information about a linear peptidomimetic HCV serine protease inhibitor called as telaprevir in phase III trials. During phase II trials conducted beforehand, the combination of telaprevir with peginterferon-ribavirin was more efficient when compared to peginterferon-ribavirin alone, which suggested that the duration of telaprevir with peginterferon-ribavirin treatment can be shortened in most patients. 1088 untreated HCV genotype 1 patients ...

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Mohd Hanafiah, K, Groeger, J, Flaxman, AD & Wiersma, ST (2013) Global epidemiology of hepatitis C virus infection: New estimates of age-specific antibody to HCV seroprevalence. Hepatology 57: 1333-1342.
Shepard, CW, Finelli, L & Alter, MJ (2005) Global epidemiology of hepatitis C virus infection. Lancet Infect 5: 558-567.
Vince, B, Hill, JM, Lawitz, EJ, O’Riordan, W, Webster, LR, Gruener, DM, Mofsen, RS, Murillo, A, Donovan, E, Chen, J et al. (2014) A randomized, double-blind, multiple-dose study of the pan-genotypic NS5A inhibitor samatasvir in patients infected with hepatitis C virus genotype 1, 2, 3 or 4. Journal of Hepatology 60: 920-927.
Zazrin, H, Shaked, H & Chill, JH (2013) Architecture of the hepatitis C virus E1 glycoprotein transmembrane domain studied by NMR. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 784-792. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamem.2013.10.021

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