TY - JOUR T1 - Interferon-β plus ribavirin for patients with hepatitis C virus genotype 1: a randomised pilot trial JF - Gut JO - Gut SP - 139 LP - 140 DO - 10.1136/gut.2005.081935 VL - 55 IS - 1 AU - M Enomoto AU - A Tamori AU - N Kawada AU - H Jomura AU - S Nishiguchi AU - T Saibara AU - S Onishi AU - S Mochida AU - K Fujiwara Y1 - 2006/01/01 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/55/1/139.abstract N2 - The rate of sustained eradication of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in response to a combination of interferon-α and ribavirin remains unsatisfactory in patients with genotype 1 infection.1 No effective alternative treatment is currently available for non-responders. Interferon-β is also a type I interferon commonly used to treat chronic HCV infection in Japan. A previous study showed that a 24 week course of therapy with interferon-β plus ribavirin resulted in sustained loss of HCV in three of nine patients with chronic hepatitis C.2 However, the efficacy and safety of interferon-β combined with ribavirin has yet to be fully evaluated. We report the results of a randomised pilot trial comparing interferon-β plus ribavirin with interferon-α plus ribavirin in patients with HCV genotype 1 who poorly responded to interferon-α plus ribavirin. A total of 28 patients with HCV genotype 1 were given 6 MU of recombinant interferon-α2b (Schering-Plough, Kenilworth, New Jersey, USA) by intramuscular injection … ER -