Emerging treatments in chronic hepatitis B

Abstract

Although the management of chronic hepatitis B has improved over the last decade, none of the available therapeutic agents, IFN-α, lamivudine and adefovir dipivoxil, can achieve sustained off-therapy responses in most cases. Therefore, several newer, mainly antiviral and immunomodulatory agents, are being evaluated. Pegylated IFN-α_2a has been shown to be more effective than lamivudine or standard IFN-α monotherapy in achieving post-therapy biochemical and virological responses, and is expected to be licensed soon for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B. Newer antiviral agents, such as entecavir and telbivudine, appear to be quite effective initially, but their sustained off-therapy response rates remain unknown. The preliminary data of monotherapies with immunomodulatory agents, or of combination therapies, have been rather disappointing. Long-term maintenance treatment with antiviral agent(s) with good safety and tolerability profiles and low resistance rates appears to be the most realistic future therapeutic option for most chronic hepatitis B patients.

• adefovir
• chronic hepatitis B
• combination therapy
• entecavir
• hepatitis B virus
• IFN-α
• lamivudine
• nucleoside analogues
• pegylated IFN-α
• thymosin