Just eight weeks of treatment with the fixed-dose combination tablet of Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and ledipasvir can cure over 90 percent of non-cirrhotic people with genotype 1 of hepatitis C virus (HCV), MedPage Today reports. Neither ribavirin nor an extra four weeks of treatment improved the outcomes. Results from the ION-3 trial were presented at the 49th annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) in London and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

A total of 647 treatment-naive study participants were randomly assigned to receive either eight weeks of the fixed-dose combination pill of the nucleotide analog NS5B polymerase inhibitor Sovaldi and the NS5A inhibitor ledipasvir, or eight weeks of the combination pill plus ribavirin, or just the combo pill for 12 weeks.

Ninety-four percent of those who just took the combo pill for eight weeks achieved a sustained virologic response 12 weeks after completing therapy (SVR12, considered a cure), compared with a 93 percent cure rate for those who also took ribavirin and a 95 percent cure rate for those who took the combo pill alone for 12 weeks.

Those who took ribavirin reported a higher rate of adverse side effects.

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To read the study, click here.