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Article: Cost Effectiveness of RBV/IFN Alfa-2b After Interferon Relapse in Chronic Hepatitis C.
- Article from:
- Internal Medicine Alert
- Article date:
- June 29, 2000
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Clinical Briefs
By Louis Kuritzky, MD
Cost Effectiveness of RBV/IFN Alfa-2b After Interferon Relapse in Chronic Hepatitis C
Although interferon (ifn) can transiently eliminate virus from the serum in almost half of hepatitis C infected individuals, most relapse, with or without sustained treatment. Fortunately, combining ribavirin (RBV) with interferon (RBV/IFN) is able to produce undetectable virus levels in almost half of patients who relapse after IFN monotherapy. Unfortunately, RBV/IFN costs almost three times as much as IFN alone, calling into question the cost effectiveness of this regimen.
Using short-term clinical trial data to ...