An eight-week treatment of Harvoni (ledipasvir/sofosbuvir) boasts high hepatitis C virus (HCV) cure rates in real-world practice. Even those in a real-world study who did not qualify for eight-week (as opposed to 12- or 24-week) treatment did well on Harvoni.

Harvoni’s label states that those who do hot have cirrhosis, have not been treated for hep C before and have a low hep C viral load can take the regimen for just eight weeks.

Researchers from the ongoing GECCO study, a multicenter cohort of nine treatment centers in Germany, published an analysis in Clinical Infectious Diseases of all the people in the real-world study who started hep C treatment after January 2014. The analysis included 210 people with hep C and 35 people living with both HCV and HIV (known as being coinfected).

Looking just at those treated with Harvoni for eight weeks, the researchers found that 93.5 percent (186 of 199) achieved a sustained virologic response 12 weeks after completing therapy (SVR12, considered a cure). When restricting their analysis to just those who completed treatment and the study’s follow-up, the SVR rate was 99 percent (186 of 188).

The cure rate after eight weeks of treatment was 96 percent (27 of 28) among the HIV/HCV-coinfected individuals.

Thirty-four participants were treated for eight weeks despite having been treated for hep C before. Four of those individuals did not respond to their previous treatment, and nine relapsed after their previous treatment. Otherwise, most of the group of 34 had interrupted interferon-based treatment because of side effects. So in fact, out of all those who did not qualify for eight weeks of Harvoni, most had not technically failed their previous treatment. (Those who fail hep C treatment tend to be harder to cure.)

Ninety-seven percent (30 of 31) of those who had been treated before and who completed eight weeks of Harvoni in this study were cured.

To read the study abstract, click here.