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Article: African Americans respond poorly to hepatitis C treatment.
- Article from:
- Hepatitis Weekly
- Article date:
- June 21, 2004
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2004 JUN 21 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- African Americans have a significantly lower response rate to treatment for chronic hepatitis C than non-Hispanic whites, according to a new study led by Duke University Medical Center researchers.
Some African Americans - 19% - did respond to the drug combination of peginterferon alfa-2b and ribavirin. But in non-Hispanic whites with the same disease, the hepatitis C genotype 1 virus strain, 52% had no evidence of the virus in their blood 6 months after completing the drug therapy - one of the highest response rates ever reported for this therapy. The study showed the difference in infection rates between the two groups ...