14 DAY TRIAL // A paper recently published in the esteemed journal The Lancet reveals that a combination of two newly-developed drugs is able to cure hepatitis C in 97 out of 100 cases. In other words, this combo is 97 percent effective against the most common form of the hepatitis C virus (HCV).
The chemicals, called sofosbuvir and ledipasvir, are administered in a single tablet, once per day. If they are approved for mass use, then patients suffering from hepatitis C may no longer have to subject themselves to numerous injections every month and to the side-effects that come with them.
The people in the test group were selected from among patients whose disease did not respond to standard courses of treatment. For these individuals, there was no other hope of getting rid of their HCV infection. The drug combo that cured them came just once a day, and had no side-effects.
However, there is one downside to this study. If and when sofosbuvir and ledipasvir are allowed by the US Food and Drug Administration to enter the market, they are likely to be very expensive, Science Blog reports.