In an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, University of Michigan Health hepatologist Anna S. Lok, M.D., hails newly announced results of the B-Well clinical trials as "a major step toward a functional cure for hepatitis B virus infection."
The results, published concurrently in NEJM, report that 20% and 19% of patients in two duplicate clinical trials achieved a functional cure for their chronic hepatitis B infections following 24 weeks of bepirovirsen (versus 0% of the placebo groups).
The lead and corresponding author of the trial results is Jinlin Hou, M.D., Chairman and Professor of the Hepatology Unit and Department of Infectious Diseases, Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China.
The University of Michigan Health did not participate in these clinical trials.
The most common treatment for chronic hepatitis B infection, nucleoside or nucleotide analog (NA) therapy, can successfully suppress hepatitis B virus replication—reducing the risk of cirrhosis and cancer—but is rarely curative, and most patients will relapse if treatment is discontinued before hepatitis B surface antigen loss.
