Six weeks of Mavyret (glecaprevir/pibrentasvir) cured almost all of those recently infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), including those with HIV coinfection.

Publishing their findings in the journal Hepatology, researchers conducted an open-label, single-arm, multicenter, international pilot study among people who had contracted hep C within 12 months.

The study included 30 men with a median age of 43. Ninety percent were men who have sex with men. (Sex between men can transmit hep C.) Eighty-three percent had genotype 1 of hep C, 10% had genotype 4 and 7% had genotype 3. Seventy-seven percent had HIV/HCV coinfection, 47% had ever injected drugs and 13% had previously cleared hep C but had been reinfected.

At the study’s outset, the participants had been infected with HCV for an estimated median of 29 weeks. The median hep C viral load was 1.6 million.

After six weeks of Mavyret treatment, 90% (27 of 30) of the participants achieved a sustained virologic response 12 weeks after completing therapy, considered a cure. One person experienced a viral relapse. When excluding the one person who died and the one person who was lost to follow-up, the cure rate was 96% (27 of 28).

None of the participants experienced serious adverse health events.

“[Mavyret] for six weeks was highly effective among people with acute and recent HCV infection, supporting further evaluation of shortened-duration pan-genotypic therapy in this setting,” the study authors concluded, referring to hep C treatments approved for all genotypes of the virus.

To read the study abstract, click here.