Skip Navigation



JAC Advance Access published online on May 10, 2005
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, doi:10.1093/jac/dki142
This Article
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
55/6/824    most recent
dki142v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Ballesteros, A. L.
Right arrow Articles by Tural, C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Ballesteros, A. L.
Right arrow Articles by Tural, C.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Leading article

Role of viral kinetics under HCV therapy in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients

Angel Luis Ballesteros 1, Daniel Fuster 1, Ramon Planas 2, Bonaventura Clotet 1, and Cristina Tural 1*

1 HIV Clinical Unit, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2 Hepatology and Gastroenterology Department, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Cristina Tural, E-mail: ctural{at}ns.hugtip.scs.es


  Abstract

Patients coinfected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are less responsive to anti-HCV therapies and are at a higher risk of toxicity than HCV monoinfected patients. HCV viral kinetics is the basis for the study of response to interferon-based therapy and for predicting sustained virological response (SVR). A lack of early virological response (EVR; undetectable HCV RNA or a decrease of ≥2 log10 from baseline) after 12 weeks of pegylated interferon (peg-IFN) plus ribavirin (RBV) is an equally reliable predictor of lack of SVR in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients and in the monoinfected HCV population. Early stopping rules are particularly important in coinfected HIV/HCV patients, considering their low chances of response in the more difficult-to-treat HCV genotypes 1 and 4 (<30%). Several factors have been involved in this low efficacy, including higher baseline HCV viraemia, slower viral kinetics decay under interferon pressure and a defective immune substratum. A better understanding of HCV viral kinetics under HCV therapy may be the basis for assaying different peg-IFN plus RBV schedules, such as induction or extending strategies, and may help physicians to make tailored decisions for the management of their patients.

Keywords: HCV kinetics; early virological response; peg-IFN efficacy.
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.