Hep Magazine Dr. Douglas Dieterich: “Coinfected With HIV and Hep C? Time to Party Like it’s 1996”
Echoing the 1996 introduction of HIV antiretroviral cocktails, 2014 is all but certain to go down in history as HCV’s watershed year (give or take a few months on either end). Two highly tolerable new drugs, Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and Janssen’s Olysio (simeprevir), were approved at the close of 2013, expanding current treatment options and upping the chances of a cure for both mono- and coinfected people with hep C. “We started almost 200 [people] on treatment [of Sovaldi] in December,” said Douglas Dieterich, MD, Professor of Medicine (Liver Diseases) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “We’re seeing the follow-ups now at week eight [of treatment]. Nobody has any side effects." Learn more