Finding out about hep C will help you plan for the future. Our Hep C Action Newsletter Program can help guide you through testing and treatment.
Treatment Options
The standard treatment for hep C is pegylated interferon plus ribavirin. It is the most advanced, most successful course of action that medical science has yet found for fighting hep C. For a significant percentage of patients, pegylated interferon works—clearing the virus from their blood and/or making a real difference in their liver health.
What we call “interferon” is a protein, and it’s no stranger to the human body. In fact, your body naturally produces interferon and makes even more when it tries to fight off an intruder, such as a virus. You’ve experienced this if you’ve ever had the flu. When you have the flu, your body makes extra interferon to defeat the virus that’s causing the illness. It’s this extra interferon that also causes symptoms like fever, nausea, and fatigue.
People with chronic hep C may inject extra interferon into their bodies to help fight the virus. While the interferon that’s used for injection may be slightly different from the kind your body makes, it helps the body defeat the virus in 3 ways:
- Interferon attaches to healthy cells and helps them defend themselves against the virus.
- The medication helps the immune system to stop the virus from multiplying.
- Interferon also helps the body get rid of infected cells while preventing healthy cells from being infected.
Alpha interferons have been known to cause severe side effects, including new or worsening mental health problems such as depression, trouble breathing, chest pain, high fever, or worsening of certain immune-type diseases such as psoriasis. These disorders generally resolve after stopping therapy.
Pegylation is the process of attaching 1 or more chains of a substance called polyethylene glycol (also known as PEG) to a protein molecule such as interferon. Since the body does not react to PEG, it helps provide a protective barrier around an attached protein so it can survive in the body longer.
When used with medications, this barrier may help provide benefits over molecules that are not pegylated. In the case of pegylated interferon, it stays in the bloodstream longer and is cleared by the body more slowly. That’s what makes once-a-week treatment possible. It also may account for the higher rates of sustained virologic response seen in patients whose chronic hep C infections were treated with this pegylated interferon compared to nonpegylated interferon.
