Loehr, Hermann Stef-fens, Christine John, Peter R. Geyer, Thomas Witthoeft, Andreas Herrmann, Mark Hoesl, Elmar Zehnter Aim:
With the recent use of more effective direct acting antiviral agents (DAA), HCV RNA undetectability appears earlier during therapy and most patients have undetectable viral load at week 4 of triple therapy. The objective was to assess within the ANRS CO20-CUPIC cohort whether the viral load (VL) at week 2/week 6 for telaprevir/boceprevir-based triple therapy, respectively, was predictive of sustained virological EX 527 supplier response (SVR) in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and to study the relevance of this measurement to early diagnose drug
resistance. Methods: Observational study of HCV genotype 1 patients with compensated cirrhosis (Child-Pugh A), non-responders to a prior course of interferon (IFN)-based therapy and who started triple therapy. Patients received either 12 weeks of telaprevir in combination with PEG-IFN/ribavirin (RBV) then 36 weeks of PEG-IFN/RBV, or 4 weeks of PEG-IFN/ RBV then 44 weeks of PEG-IFN/RBV and boceprevir. Only patients with viral load assessment check details at week 2 for telaprevir or week 6 for boceprevir were kept for the analysis. HCV-RNA levels were measured at baseline and at weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 36, ABT199 and 48 of therapy, and 12 weeks after the end of treatment, with a real-time PCR based assay, either COBAS AmpliPrep/COBAS TaqMan (Roche Molecular Systems, Pleas-anton, California) with a lower limit of detection of 15 IU/ml, or m2000SP/m2000RT (Abbott Molecular, Des Moines,
Illinois), with a lower limit of detection of 12 IU/ml. Results: Data on 288 patients were analyzed. For telaprevir-treated patients, 28% had undetectable VL at W2 of whom 81% achieved SVR12 whereas 67% had undetectable VL at W4 of whom 67% achieved SVR12. For boceprevir-treated patients 20% had undetectable VL at W6 and 86% of them achieved SVR12 whereas 36% had undetectable VL at W8 among whom 73% achieved SVR12. Five telaprevir-treated patients had a VL increase between W2 and W4 after a decrease between D0 and W2. Four of them did not achieve SVR12. Similarly, six boceprevir-treated patients had a VL increase between W6 and W8 after a decrease between D0 and W6. Five did not reach SVR12.