{"id":9835,"date":"2004-04-02T21:04:46","date_gmt":"2004-04-02T21:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/?p=9835"},"modified":"2014-05-22T18:41:13","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T18:41:13","slug":"nice-approves-pegylated-interferon-plus-ribavirin-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/9835","title":{"rendered":"NICE approves pegylated interferon plus ribavirin in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Britain\u2019s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has issued guidance on the use of interferon alpha, peginterferon alfa \u2013 a newer, longer-acting version of interferon alfa, which doesn\u2019t need to be taken as often \u2013 and ribavirin for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C within the National Health Service in England and Wales.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>NICE has made the following recommendations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Combination therapy with peginterferon alfa and ribavirin should be used to treat people aged 18\u00a0years or older who have moderate to severe chronic hepatitis C if they:<br \/>\n&#8211; have not been treated before with either interferon alfa or peginterferon alfa, and\/or<br \/>\n&#8211; have been treated before with interferon alfa but not with peginterferon alfa, and\/or<br \/>\n&#8211; have been treated with peginterferon alfa monotherapy but it did not work, or the virus came back after treatment<\/li>\n<li>The length of the treatment depends on the HCV genotype and how well a person initially responds to the drugs.<\/li>\n<li>People who are currently being treated with interferon alfa may be switched to peginterferon alfa.<\/li>\n<li>People who cannot take ribavirin, or have bad side effects from it, should be treated with peginterferon alfa monotherapy.<\/li>\n<li>People who are likely to have complications from the procedure do not need to have a liver biopsy to find out how extensive their liver damage is before treatment is started.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: NICE press release. PDF file of guidelines:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nice.org.uk\/pdf\/TA075guidance.pdf\">http:\/\/www.nice.org.uk\/pdf\/TA075guidance.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Britain\u2019s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has issued guidance on the use of interferon alpha, peginterferon alfa \u2013 a newer, longer-acting version of interferon alfa, which doesn\u2019t need to be taken as often \u2013 and ribavirin for the treatment &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hepatitis-coinfection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}