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Ask the Experts about Hepatitis and HIV Coinfection
Just what are the weight-based ribavirin doses for HepC treatment? And does it matter what brand of pegInterferon or ribavirin you're taking? Thank you!
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Response from Dr. McGovern
Weight based dosing of ribavirin is important for patients with certain genotypes of hepatitis C. This is particularly important for patients with genotype 1 and 4 infection.
However, patients with genotype 2 or 3 get 400 mg twice daily of ribavirin - regardless of weight. An important study several years ago showed that in these infections, the dosing of a total of 800 mg daily was just as good as weight based dosing.
There is not a major difference in interferons based on clinical outcomes in terms of 2 drug combination therapy with interferon/ribavirin.
In the future, we will need to see which interferon may be best when we combine these drugs with other specific HCV agents (like the HCV protease inhibitor telaprevir) to know which one may be better in that scenario.
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