Hepatitis C drug boceprevir achieves 70% viral suppression rate in HIV co-infected people within 24 weeks

Interim results presented at the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) conference show that 70.5% of 98 patients with HIV and hepatitis C who took the hepatitis C protease inhibitor (PI) drug boceprevir (Victrelis), plus pegylated interferon and ribavirin (pIFN/RBV) had an undetectable hepatitis C viral load by week 24 of the 48-week placebo-controlled study. This compares with 34.4% on placebo.

These results compare with a 68% response rate seen for the other licensed hepatitis C PI telaprevir (Incivo in the EU or Incivek in the US) in co-infected patients, which were presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) this February.In the case of telaprevir, these results were at week twelve of a 48-week study.

One difference in results between the two drugs was that only 5% of patients receiving placebo in the telaprevir study had an undetectable viral load at week 12.

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