Improvements in our understanding of the kinetics of viral load during antiviral therapy have shown us that more potent suppression of viral replication increases the rate of viral eradication, providing selleckchem impetus for the development of more potent DAAs. Emerging results from clinical trials of these agents—including trials of interferon-free DAA combinations—suggest that very high rates of viral eradication are achievable, even in patients who failed to respond to previous courses of interferon-based therapy. Furthermore, because of these high rates of treatment success, on-treatment assessment of viral response

may become unnecessary. The field

of hepatitis C virus therapy is evolving rapidly and current trends indicate that the era of simple treatment regimens with high rates of success and good tolerability are near. The goal of treating chronic hepatitis C is sustained virological selleck chemical response (SVR), historically defined as undetectable hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA 24 weeks after the end of treatment. Among patients who achieved SVR in nine therapeutic trials, 99.1% still had undetectable HCV RNA after several years of follow-up (mean 3.9 years).[1] SVR is associated with improvements in markers of hepatic function and strong reductions in the long-term risks of hepatocellular carcinoma and other liver-associated morbidity and mortality.[2, 3] For a number of years, the standard therapy for chronic hepatitis C was pegylated interferon (PegIFN) α2a or α2b in combination with ribavirin (RBV), given for 48 weeks to patients with genotype 1 or 4 HCV infection, or for 24 weeks to patients with genotype 2 or

3 HCV infection.[4] However, PegIFN/RBV therapy is difficult to tolerate, leading to high rates of treatment discontinuation.[5, 6] Furthermore, only 40–50% of genotype 1 patients achieve SVR after a first course of PegIFN/RBV.[6-10] The prolonged course of therapy required for treating patients with genotype 1 HCV, along with the associated relatively low SVR rates and poor tolerability, have been significant drawbacks to the use of PegIFN/RBV. The this website desire to minimize exposure to PegIFN/RBV and to optimize response rates led to the development of the concept of response-guided therapy (RGT), which can be defined as determining treatment duration on the basis of viral load at a specific time after initiation of therapy.[5] The use of RGT began in the era of PegIFN/RBV, where it was demonstrated that certain patient subgroups with favorable baseline characteristics associated with higher rates of SVR could receive a shorter duration of therapy.