Review of Hepatitis C infection and comparison of treatment outcomes in patients with Chronic Hepatitis C infection, GT 3, treatment naive when treated with PEG-IFN alfa-2a or PEG-IFN alfa-2b plus RBV

[Truncated abstract] Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection represents a significant public health problem not only in Australia but also worldwide with approximately 170 million infected individuals and up to 4 million persons infected each year. Unlike hepatitis A or B, there is no vaccination and hence no preventative treatment for HCV. The only option for already HCV-infected individuals is to undergo the HCV combination treatment comprising of Pegylated interferon (Peg-IFN) alfa-2a or alfa-2b in combination with ribavirin (RBV) which is the standard of care (SOC) for HCV treatment approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia (TGA). While a number of investigations have shown higher SVR rates with PEG-IFN alfa-2a, but lower relapse rates for Peg-IFN alfa-2b treated subjects with HCV GT 1 (2, 7, 8), limited data exist for the HCV GT 3 infections alone.