Interferon Found Effective Against Hepatitis B
Interferon is the first treatment to relieve and cause remission of lingering hepatitis B infections, the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer and one of the world’s biggest killers, researchers have found.
A study found that injections of the natural protein can stop the hepatitis B virus from destroying the liver in almost half of the people who are chronically infected. One in 10 undergoes remission.
Until now, there has been no treatment for the hepatitis B virus. While interferon clearly does not help everyone, having any therapy at all is considered to be an important step in controlling the infection.
“This is an encouraging result. All of us would feel a lot happier if we had a better treatment. This spurs us on to find that,” commented Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. He won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1976 for identifying the hepatitis B virus.
The latest research, conducted on 169 people at 12 hospitals, is the first large-scale comparison study of interferon for hepatitis B. It confirms several smaller studies suggesting that the treatment works.
Other studies have also shown that interferon works against hepatitis C, another serious but less common variety of the virus. On Tuesday, an advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended that interferon be marketed for hepatitis C.
“We can be relatively sure what doctors will find in practice, said Dr. Robert P. Perrillo of the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the principal author of the study. Perrillo said that 10% of hepatitis B patients will undergo remission “and 40% or 50% will be made better and their liver disease will be stopped in its tracks.”
The results were published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million people in the United States are long-term carriers of the virus, and at least half of them have liver disease. Worldwide, 300 million people, or 5% of the population, are chronically infected.
