Efficacy of sofosbuvir with pegylated interferon alfa-2a and ribavirin vs sofosbuvir and ribavirin in patients with hepatitis C in Egypt / Kareem Hassan Ali Alrawy ; Supervised Wael Mohamed Aref , Ashraf Ahmed Mahmoud Abobakr , Rasha Mohamed Abdelsamie

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Internal Medicine

Background: In Egypt, about 15% of the population have chronic hepatitis C and over 90% of the infected patients have HCV genotype 4. Sofosbuvir (SOF), is a second-generation nucleotide inhibitor that was FDA approved in December 2013 for treatment of HCV genotypes 4 in combination with RBV +/- Peg-IFN. Objectives: To assess SVR12 of chronic HCV patients in Egypt after treatment with SOF and Peg-IFN and RBV for 12 weeks vs with SOF and ribavirin for 24 weeks. Methods: 266 chronically infected HCV patients recruited from Maadi Military hospital were assigned into two groups. Group A, 99 patients who were interferon eligible and received SOF plus Peg-IFN and RBV for 12 weeks and Group B included 167 patients who were IFN ineligible and received SOF and RBV for 24 weeks. Each of the two groups were divided into HCV treatment naïve and HCV treatment experienced. HCV RNA PCR was measured at 4th week of treatment, end of treatment and post-treatment week 12. Results: 94.9% of patients in group A achieved SVR12 vs 83.8% in group B. A total of 16 patients stopped treatment due to anemia (hg less than 8.5mg/L) 3 from group A, 13 from group B. Conclusion: Receiving SOF+RBV+IFN for 3 months is associated with a higher efficacy (greater percentage of patients achieving SVR12) than receiving SOF+RBV for 6 months for treatment of chronic HCV infected patients in Egypt

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