Treatment Breakthrough for Children With Chronic Hepatitis B
BioChem Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ: BCHE; TSE: BCH) announced that new Zeffix data were presented today at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress, in Prague, the Czech Republic.
One in four of the many millions of children worldwide who become chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) during early childhood, will go on to die from liver cancer or cirrhosis of the liver in adulthood as a result of the infection. This statistic could soon become a thing of the past, according to exciting new research presented at the EASL Congress.
The study’s results show that a year’s treatment with Zeffix (lamivudine), induces a complete virologic response (CVR), a good indicator that the virus has been effectively suppressed, in almost a quarter (23%) of children suffering from the disease. These children were therefore able to stop treatment. This was significantly better than the placebo group, where only 13% achieved the same outcome. The result is similar to that observed after one year’s treatment in adults suffering from chronic hepatitis B, where Zeffix is already an established treatment. Data in adults have shown that the number of patients who achieve complete virologic response on Zeffix treatment increases year-on-year, and at four years, three quarters of patients with active liver disease† are able to stop treatment. These new data suggest that this pattern of improvement may be mirrored in children. Importantly, even the 18% of patients with a variant form of HBV (YMDD variant HBV), which have reduced susceptibility to Zeffix in laboratory assays, derived some clinical benefit from treatment.
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