An effective hepatitis C drug for inflammation of the liver

Hepatitis C medication and treatment

Hepatitis C is a disease that can be cured, but it takes a long time because it causes serious liver infection.

Long before technology developed, the choice of hepatitis C drugs relied only on injection of drugs with large side effects with low cure rates.

This is because hepatitis C has various types of hepatitis, namely 7 types of HCV genes with more than 60 subtypes. The most common HCV genotype is hepatitis C type-1.

Any type of hepatitis virus can damage the liver with symptoms or long-term health conditions.

This is what makes doctors need to be extra careful when giving drugs and treatment for hepatitis type C according to the severity and type of genes.

Acute hepatitis C medications and treatments

Symptoms of acute hepatitis C type are generally not too bothersome. However, it would be nice to go to a doctor when you feel that your body is unwell.

The sooner hepatitis is diagnosed with a blood test, the easier the treatment will be.

Treatment for hepatitis C will usually be supervised by an internal medicine doctor who specializes in liver disease (hepatologist) and digestion (gastroenterologist).

After making a diagnosis, the doctor will usually ask you to undergo simple home treatments, such as:

stop drinking alcohol,
get more rest,
meet fluid requirements, as well
undergo a healthy diet for hepatitis sufferers.

Apart from simple treatment, you will also be asked to have a series of blood tests at regular intervals. This aims to determine the development of viral infections.

If the viral load increases, you may be prescribed hepatitis C drugs or receive an injection to suppress the virus.

Chronic hepatitis C treatment

If the hepatitis C virus infection has lasted more than 6 months, you may have entered the chronic hepatitis stage with disturbing symptoms.

In the chronic infection stage, doctors will try to stop HCV infection, control the symptoms of hepatitis C, and reduce the risk of complications, such as cirrhosis and liver cancer.

The following are some of the treatment options and chronic hepatitis C medications that doctors usually give.

Combination of interferon and ribavirin

Initially, hepatitis C treatment relied on interferon injection combined with ribavirin as the general hepatitis drug.

Interferon is a type of protein that helps the immune system fight viruses. This drug is usually given once a week at a cost which is quite expensive.

Now, the combination of interferon and ribavirin is starting to be abandoned by several countries, including Indonesia. The reason is, this hepatitis C treatment has a low chance of cure, but it triggers serious side effects, including:

nausea and vomiting,
fatigue,
headache,
fever,
anemia,
high blood pressure,
anxiety disorder,
emotional changes, as well
depression.

Direct Acting Antiviral (DAA)

Considering that the combination of interferon and ribavirin is considered ineffective, many countries are starting to switch to Direct Acting Antiviral (DAA) as the drug of choice for hepatitis C.

Direct Acting Antiviral is a type of drug that works the same as other antiviral drugs, namely to fight viral infections directly. DAA is an oral drug that has a shorter therapy period than interferon, which is 8 to 12 weeks.

This hepatitis treatment is said to be more effective in stopping viral infections. In fact, since DAA was discovered, the rate of cure for hepatitis A in the world has jumped drastically to 90 percent.

The good news is, the side effects of this hepatitis drug are also lower and can be obtained at affordable prices. In Indonesia alone, the type of DAA drug that is more widely used is a combination of daclastavir and sofosbuvir.

These two drugs are commonly used to fight all hepatitis C virus genotypes. The dose given by this drug is around 60 milligrams of daclastavir and 400 milligrams of sofosbuvir taken once a day for a maximum of 12 weeks.

Direct Acting Antiviral (DAA) is a type of drug that is currently widely used to treat hepatitis C. This drug functions like an antiviral in general that fights viral infections directly.

In addition to this combination drug, there are other antiviral combinations that can fight HCV infection based on gene type, namely:

daclatasvir and sofosbuvir,
sofosbuvir and velpatasvir,
sofosbuvir, velpatasvir, and voxilapresvir,
glecaprevir and pibrentasvir,
elbasvir and grazoprevir,
ledipasvir and sofosbuvir, as well
sofosbuvir and ribavirin.

Liver transplant

If not treated immediately, you are at risk of developing chronic hepatitis C complications such as cirrhosis and long-term liver damage. As a result, the hepatitis C treatments and drugs that have been mentioned are no longer effective.

The only way to treat liver damage from hepatitis C is a liver transplant. This liver transplant procedure aims to restore liver function by replacing the damaged liver with a healthy donor liver.

However, liver transplantation does not actually cure hepatitis C. HCV infection can recur even after the transplant has been performed.

This makes hepatitis C patients who have undergone a transplant need treatment that needs to be accompanied by antiviral drugs.