Active clinical trials for "Hepatitis"

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes a wide spectrum of liver diseases, such as fulminant or acute hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. The number of individuals infected with this virus has been estimated to be as high as 350 million. Thus, in addition to global hepatitis B vaccination, effective treatment of chronic hepatitis B is also needed. Currently, there are no effective antiviral treatments to cure HBV infection in patients with chronic hepatitis B. Five drugs have been approved for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B at present: conventional interferon (IFN) alpha, lamivudine, adefovir dipivoxil, pegylated IFN alpha and recently entecavir. Overall, satisfactory virologic and serologic responses could be achieved using pegylated IFN alpha alone in around 20-44% of these patients. Nevertheless, better treatment options are still needed for the remaining >50% non-responders. Although the best treatment choice for chronic hepatitis B is not clarified yet, certain therapeutic concepts could be derived from the experience of treating patients with chronic hepatitis C. A major advancement in treating hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been the development of combination therapy with IFN and ribavirin. IFN monotherapy is limited by poor sustained virologic responses, even when higher doses of IFN are used. IFN plus ribavirin combination therapy, in contrast, results in much improved treatment outcomes. In our previous study and others, sustained remission rate after cessation of therapy were significantly higher in patients receiving combination therapy than those receiving IFN alone. Therefore, combination therapy with IFN and ribavirin has been recommended as the standard treatment regimen for chronic hepatitis C. Furthermore, we have used ribavirin and IFN combination for the treatment of dual chronic hepatitis B and C, and the results also revealed that the efficacy of clearing HCV RNA was not affected by the presence of HBV infection. Interestingly, after a little more than 2-year post-treatment follow-up, we found that a significant portion (21%) of the responsive patients also cleared HBsAg. These findings imply that this combination regimen might be also effective for the control of chronic hepatitis B. We thus conducted a randomized, multi-center, placebo-controlled study in patients with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B.

Investigation of the usefullness of therapeutical drug monitoring of ribavirin for dose adaptation during combination therapy of chronic hepatitis C patients. The correlation between ribavirin plasma concentration levels at week 4 (steady state) and early virological response (HCV-RNA decay from baseline to week 12) is to be tested in 40 patients approximately.

* AIMS OF THE STUDY (STUDY OBJECTIVES) To test the effect of daily lamivudine (100 mg) in reducing the risk of HBV reactivation and hepatitis development in HBsAg (+) NHL patients. To test the efficacy of daily lamivudine in preventing and treating hepatitis B reactivation and in circumventing hepatic failure and death. To test whether lamivudine can improve the overall outcome of NHL patients who are HBV carriers. (Study end-points: The major end-point: hepatitis B reactivation in NHL patients---defined by higher than 10-fold increase of serum HBV DNA level and/or reappearance of HBeAg in the serum during and within 6 months after chemotherapy. The minor end-point I : events of hepatic failure and death---defined by jaundice with hepatic encephalopathy. The minor end-point II: the response rate and survival rate in HBsAg-positive NHL patients receiving lamivudine prophylaxis and treatment.)

The aim of therapy for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) is to maintain suppression of viral replication to prevent the emergence of complications, which requires long-term therapy. Durable suppression of viral replication is achieved in the treatment of chronic viral diseases by preventing of the emergence of drug-resistant mutations. The clinical guidelines for the management of lamivudine resistant patients are variable. Some recommend switching to another agent without cross-resistance, while others recommend adding on another agent without cross-resistance. Limited clinical data exists to demonstrate whether tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (tenofovir DF; TDF) is an effective monotherapy for lamivudine resistant patients or if it should be used as part of a combination therapy regimen. This study is designed to evaluate the effectiveness, safety, and tolerability of tenofovir DF monotherapy versus emtricitabine (FTC)/tenofovir DF combination therapy in participants with chronic HBV with lamivudine resistance (presence of the rtM204I/V mutation with or without the rtL180M mutation) over a 240-week period. Participants in this study must be receiving lamivudine treatment at the time of enrollment.

Phase 1, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-escalation study with 3 dose levels of IMO-2125 in combination with standard weight based ribavirin (investigational treatment arm) or placebo in combination with ribavirin (RBV). Each cohort of 15 patients will be randomized 4:1 to receive the investigational treatment arm (12 patients) or placebo and RBV arm (3 patients).

Rationale: Worldwide, approximately 400 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV). Chronic HBV infection increases the risk of developing cirrhosis, hepatic decompensation and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma is highest in HBeAg positive patients with high HBV DNA levels, but still the relative risk remains 10 for HBeAg negative patients. Furthermore it has been shown that when HBsAg is cleared before cirrhosis has developed, the prognosis is excellent. Recently the investigators have shown that HBeAg negative patients with high HBV-DNA load and low baseline HBsAg levels had a significantly higher HBsAg clearance (positive predictive value of 85%) after combination therapy with peginterferon alfa2a (Peg-IFN) and adefovir. Based on these results, a trial was designed to investigate whether combination of a nucleos(t)ide analogue combined with PegIFN, could also provoke a high rate of HBsAg clearance in chronic hepatitis B patients with low (HBV DNA <20,000 IU/mL) viral load. Study design: This is a three arm open-label prospective randomized controlled trial. 150 patients will be enrolled into the study after assessment of eligibility. All patients must have documented HBsAg positivity for longer than 6 months, HBeAg negativity, anti-HBe positivity, HBV DNA < 20,000 IU/mL and ALT < 5 * upper limit of normal. Patients with a Child Pugh class B or C will be excluded. Group 1 will consist of patients treated with Peg-IFN and adefovir, group 2 will consist of patients treated with Peg-IFN and tenofovir and group 3 will consist of untreated controls. Patients in group 1 and 2 will receive medication for the period of one year. For enrolment into the study a liverbiopsy at time of enrolment is compulsory and is advisable at end of treatment (week 48). Study population: The study population will consist of 150 patients chronically infected with hepatitis B virus with low viral load and HBeAg negativity. Main study parameters/endpoints: The aim of this study is to investigate what proportion of HBeAg negative, inactive carriers of the hepatitis B virus with low (< 20,000 IU/mL) load will lose HBsAg when treated with nucleot(s)ide analogue/Peg-IFN combination therapy. In this study the investigators hypothesize that both treatment with peg-interferon and ADF or Peg-IFN and TDF in HBeAg negative chronic hepatitis B patients with low HBV DNA viral load will induce a high rate of HBsAg loss, comparable to that in patients with high viral load after treatment with ADF and Peg-IFN.

This open-label, multi-center study will evaluate the safety and tolerability and the effect on viral activity of a combined PEGASYS and COPEGUS extended therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C with genotype 1, 2 and 3. Patients who completed 48 weeks (genotype 1) or 24 weeks (genotype 2 and 3) of standard treatment with PEGASYS and COPEGUS and were identified as slow virological responders will be enrolled in this study in order to receive additional 24 weeks of treatment. PEGASYS 180 micrograms will be administered sc once weekly and COPEGUS will be administered as 800 mg, or 1000-1200 mg daily oral doses. The anticipated time on study treatment is 24 weeks. The target sample size is 50-150 patients.

Treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C infected with genotype 1 hepatitis C virus (HCV) consists of combined peginterferon/ribavirin for 48 weeks. Approximately 50% of patients experience sustained virological response which equals cure. All other patients either do not respond or experience recurrence of HCV virus and chronic hepatitis. Important predictors of successful treatment are sustained dosing of both peginterferon and ribavirin. With regard to the latter, clinical evidence indicates that higher ribavirin doses may in fact even improve treatment outcome. However, high ribavirin doses cause hemolytic anemia which require dose reductions. Recent clinical experience show that erythropoetic growth factors, including erythropoetin, can counteract hemolytic anemia caused by antiviral treatment in chronic hepatitis C patients. Therefore, the current trial aims to test whether higher ribavirin doses adapted to a target plasma concentrations instead of a weight-based dosing result in better healing rates, and whether ribavirin-associated hemolytic anemia can be compensated by concommitant erythropoetin treatment. Using a randomized, controlled, open-label design, the investigators hypothesize that patients with high ribavirin doses adapted to plasma levels experience better viral clearance than patients treated with standard weight-based ribavirin doses. In addition, the investigators hypothesize that erythropoetin treatment will counteract hemolytic anemia induced by ribavirin thereby allowing maintenance of target plasma concentrations without ribavirin dose reductions.

Treatment with a nucleoside analogue and subsequent viral decline has shown to partially restore immune hyporesponsiveness in chronic hepatitis B patients. Recent pilot studies investigating whether the effect of lowering viral load with nucleoside analogue therapy prior to the initiation of peginterferon results in higher sustained off-treatment responses showed contradictory findings. The aim of this study is to investigate sustained off-treatment response to peginterferon alfa-2b in chronic HBeAg-positive hepatitis B patients who are pretreated with nucleos(t)ide analogues, thereby lowering viral load

The presence of persistent inadequate or suboptimal virologic response is a strong risk factor for viral resistance and breakthrough and also for disease progression of chronic hepatitis B, and thus, a change in therapy is required. The combination of entecavir (ETV) and adefovir (ADV) is a promising treatment for patients with lamivudine (LAM)-resistance who show suboptimal response to the combination of LAM and ADV. In this randomized, open labeled trial,the investigators will compare the efficacy of continuation of ADV plus LAM versus switch to ADV plus ETV in adults with LAM-resistant chronic hepatitis B who shows suboptimal response to the combination treatment of ADV and LAM.