Pegylated (40 KDA) interferon alfa-2a (PEGASYS®) in new combination therapies: a report of a randomized, multicenter efficacy and safety study

Evaluation of amantadine in chronic hepatitis C: a meta-analysis

“…Among 107 references identified, 76 studies were excluded for the following reasons: 23 studies were nonrandomized [16,; 12 studies did not mention ETR or SR [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]; 20 studies did not compare treatment with and without amantadine but other combinations of treatments including amantadine [18,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75]; 2 studies concerned HIV-HCV co-infected patients [76,77]; 2 studies were performed in transplanted patients [78,79]; 1 study did not specify whether patients had received previous therapy or not [80]; 2 did not specify the exact number of patients randomized [81,82]; 14 preliminary studies were excluded as the latest publication of the trial was available [83][84][85][86][87]…”

Amantadine for chronic hepatitis C: a magic bullet or yet another dead duck?

“…If pegylated IFNs (PEG) are going to be the future standard, we need information on their combination with AMA. Data on the early kinetics of response to PEG 1 AMA have just been provided for naïve patients [37], for relapsers (Herrine et al, Digestive Disease Week, Atlanta, GA, 2001) and for non-responders (Afdahl et al, Digestive Disease Week, Atlanta, GA, 2001) to IFN/ribavirin. At 24 weeks, PEG 1 AMA had cleared HCV-RNA in 69% of naïve, in 32% of relapsers and in 18% of non-responder patients, while PEG 1 RIBA had induced clearance in 69% of relapsers and 30% of non-responders.…”

The treatment of viral hepatitis, present and future

“…Lastly, there are some preliminary data with respect to triple therapy using PEG-IFN (see below). In a pilot study by DiBisceglie et al, 22 different treatment schedules were evaluated, including 19 patients treated with PEG-IFN, ribavirin, and amantadine for 48 weeks. Only information at 24 weeks of treatment is available, and it appears that triple therapy with PEG-IFN achieved RNA-HCV negativization in 69% of the patients, although no differences were observed between this group and another group in the same study treated with the combination of IFN and ribavirin (73% negativization of RNA-HCV).…”