CAIRO – Hepatitis virus C (HVC) patients are always hoping for something new that will help them, for example new drugs advertised on websites. There is now a new drug, in the form of orally administered tablets, which, it is claimed, will put an end to painful interferon injections, according to certain pharmaceutical companies, which have appealed to the Ministry of Health to approve this drug, so it can be sold locally. This is especially important, as Egypt is a big country, with about 9 million citizens suffering from HVC. Some patients, however, fear that they will be used as guinea pigs for the new drug. Professor of Liver Diseases at Ain Shams University, Reda al-Wakil, notes that interferon is used to treat HVC, because it helps the immune system to fight the virus. Many new pharmaceutical products have been proved ineffective or to have side-effects, which is why major medical research centres believe that, at least for the next five years, interferon will be the only effective drug for treating HVC. Meanwhile, two major pharmaceutical companies have started research, in anticipation of manufacturing the new, orally administered tablets. Because it is still at the research stage, the drug, which it is thought will be used in conjunction with interferon, has yet to be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. But doctors are afraid that the virus might mutate and that the new tablets will actually encourage the virus to thrive, instead of destroying it. According to Professor of Liver Diseases Gamal Esmat, the new drug has already been tried out on strains of HVC that are common in the US, not the strains that are common in Egypt. Another problem is that the new drug will probably be very costly, more expensive than interferon. Professor of Liver Diseases and the Digestive System at Cairo University Ayman Abdel-Rahim says that research shows that the new drug has a lot of side-effects. This and the fact that it hasn't yet been tried out on hepatitis strains in Egypt should prompt Egyptian doctors not to prescribe it for their patients. Professor of Liver Diseases Hisham el-Khayat, who works at the Theodor Bilharz Research Institute in Imbaba, Giza, says that interferon and ribavirin are still the only drugs used to treat HVC. “These drugs prove effective in up to 60 per cent of cases of people in Egypt who are suffering from the ‘fourth strain' of the virus,” he adds. “It was about a decade ago that an urgent need arose to manufacture a new, orally administered drug to stop the virus reproducing after it has entered the liver.
