Tabari Biomedical Student Research Journal

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has affected approximately 180 million people
across the world. In most cases, HCV-infection remains chronic, which expose
patients at high risk of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The rates of disease
incidence and mortality diminish as a result of successful treatment of HCV
infection. Until the recent years, despite the associated toxicities and low rate of
sustained viral response, all the therapeutic regimens for HCV infection were based
on combination of interferon alfa and ribavirin. Almost 25 years after identification
of hepatitis C virus, tremendous progress was made in understanding of hepatitis
C virus and development of novel therapeutic agents. Antiviral therapy for HCV is
rapidly evolving with the advent of direct-acting antiviral agents. The new antivirals,
specifically designed to inhibit three viral proteins (the NS3/4A protease, the NS5A
protein, and the NS5B RNA dependent RNA polymerase) are currently available.
Simeprevir (NS3/4A inhibitor) and sofosbuvir (NS5B inhibitor) have been recently
licensed and can reduce the length of treatment, promote response rate, and enable
interferon-free dosing regimens for some particular HCV genotypes. Several other
more recent direct-acting antivirals are under clinical studies and are probably to be
licensed before long. In this study, we aimed to review the current treatments for
HCV infection.