A new promising combination therapy against hepatitis B outlined in a recent study, entitled, “Entecavir combined with furin inhibitor simultaneously reduces hepatitis B virus replication and e antigen secretion” published in Virology Journal
by Hui Y Yang, the first author of the study, part of Dr. Xiao M Peng’s
group from Hepatology Laboratory, the Hospital for Liver Disease, Sun
Yat-Sen University, China, may offer a potential antiviral therapy for
the chronic form of the disease.
Hepatitis B virus
(HBV) infections cause 1 million deaths worldwide per year. Antiviral
therapy is crucial to improve the prognoses of the patients. There are
three main aims to be achieved in the antiviral therapy of chronic
hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, a virological response, undetectable
levels of HBV DNA in the serum, and hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)
seroconversion (HBeAg serological response). While the HBeAg persistence
is an independent risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma, the HBeAg
seroconversion is thought to be important for a benign prognosis. The
virological response plus HBeAg serological response have a low relapse
probability, when patients are not under treatment with the current
antiviral therapy, when compared with virological response alone. The
current antiviral therapies include recombinant interferon and
nucleoside/nucleoside analogs, like entecavir (ETV), which cannot
rapidly achieve simultaneously the two main aims of the antiviral
therapy. Nucleoside analog entecavir (ETV) inhibits HBV replication but
may induce HBeAg seroconversion. For these reasons, ETV combined with
some direct HBeAg secretion-inhibitory strategies seems a way to improve
the current antiviral therapy of chronic hepatitis B.
Read more... Labels: entecavir, turin inhibitors