Hepatitis C Treatment and Vaccination

The Hepatitis C Virus has six genotypes and these genotypes may have different responses to treatment. For this reason, it is often treated with a combination of two different medicines – pegylated interferon, and ribavirin. In most cases, this treatment cures infected individuals of the virus but the outlook usually depends on the genotype of the virus. Also, drugs like telaprevir, boceprevir, and simeprevir have also been developed in this regard. On the other hand, some scientists have been working for a vaccine. A preventive vaccine has been developed by Associate Professor Heidi Drummer’s team, which would eradicate the virus when acting directly with new antiviral agents. At the Viral Fusion Laboratory, Australia, her team discovered that despite the variability of the virus protein, the strains had some unchanging characteristics. With this under consideration, a vaccine which consists of a protein with only these unchanging components was developed. This vaccine has been tested on guinea pigs and mice and it stopped the infection as the animals produced antibodies that were able to confront the unchanging components across the virus strains (Van den berg, 2013). For more information on the various treatments that have been developed for HCV, visit Treatments for Hepatitis C