Both hepatitis C drugs work about the same: study

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two standard treatments for hepatitis C work equally well at knocking down the virus for most patients, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

The findings, from a 3,000-patient comparative effectiveness study, are meant to help guide doctors' decisions about which treatments work best -- an idea at the center of Present Barack Obama's hopes for healthcare reform.

Obama is spending $1.1 billion in stimulus money to fund comparative effectiveness research to give doctors hard evidence about how medications or medical devices stack up.

"When considering treatments for hepatitis C infection, patients and their doctors now have solid evidence that they can weigh both antiviral therapies equally for effectiveness, safety and tolerability," said Dr. Mark Sulkowski of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He worked on the study that is to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Schering-Plough Corp funded the study, which compared its pegylated-interferon drug Pegintron and ribavirin antiviral combination with Roche Holding AG's Pegasys and ribavirin regimen.

Analysts estimate the U.S. prescription market for hepatitis C to be about $3 billion a year.

Even though the findings did not strongly favor one drug over another, knowing that both treatments are effective will allow doctors to pick the treatments best suited for their patients, Dr. Andrew Muir of Duke University in North Carolina, who also worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

"There had been a lot of debate about these two regimens. It's great to have a study of this size that really answers this question," he said.