AbbVie’s Mavyret (glecaprevir/pibrentasvir) is highly effective at curing hepatitis C virus (HCV) after eight weeks among those without cirrhosis, Healio reports. For this group, there is no apparent need to treat for 12 weeks.

Publishing their findings in the Journal of Hepatology, researchers pooled data from nine Phase II and III trials of Mavyret. They looked specifically at 2,041 participants with genotypes 1 through 6 of hep C who were treated with the regimen between September 2014 and October 2016. A total of 965 of them received eight weeks of treatment while 1,076 received 12 weeks.

Fifty-nine percent of the participants had a hep C viral load greater than 1 million and 11 percent had advanced fibrosis (scarring) of the liver. A respective 16 percent and 2 percent of those treated for eight and 12 weeks were coinfected with HIV.

The participants were either being treated for HCV for the first time or had previously been treated with interferon, ribavirin and Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) or Sovaldi alone. All those with genotype 3 of the virus were first-timers to treatment.

A total of 943 (98 percent) of those treated for eight weeks and 1,060 (99 percent) of those treated for 12 weeks achieved a sustained virologic response 12 weeks after completing therapy (SVR12, considered a cure). This difference was not statistically significant, meaning it could have been driven by chance. In other words, the additional four weeks of treatment offered no benefit.

When the researchers broke down the study results by subgroup, they found that cure rates were similarly high regardless of such factors as race, whether participants had been treated before, HIV coinfection, stage of fibrosis, HCV viral load, use of proton-pump inhibitors (such as Nexium), history of injection drug use, or the presence of hep C mutations associated with drug resistance (NS3 or NS5A resistance-associated substitutions).

To read the Healio article, click here.

To read the study, click here.