There is a campaign without any scientific basis against the new drugs for Hepatitis C, probably launched by certain people who had hoped they would be chosen for the National Committee for the Control of Viral Hepatitis, or doctors whose clinical business has dropped when the Health Ministry tightened control of the patients in order to ensure a proper treatment for them.
Unfortunately, the campaign succeeded in creating confusion among patients by disseminating a rumor that the virus has mutated and become resistant to the new drugs.
This is not true at all, for the cure rate speaks for itself. There are many drugs that have proved 100 percent efficiency. And there is the so-called miracle capsule that will be launched in 2017, which contains four drugs with a cure rate of 100 percent in just one week.
My reference in this issue is Dr. Hisham al-Khayat of the Theodor Bilharz Institute. He told me that the said mutations are not effective and do not produce sophisticated forms that can resist the drugs for the following reasons:
1- The short duration of the treatment between three to six months, which is not enough for the virus to mutate.
2 – Treatment with compound capsules or more than one drug completely prevents the formation and reproduction of mutations.
3 – Those mutations were detected in the Simeprevir drug when taken with Interferon but not with Sofosbuvir because the latter prevents their formation.
4 – A mutation is only effective when it reproduces, which is not possible with Sofosbuvir.
So there is no fear at all of any resisting mutations. And if it happens, the solution is to take a different compound capsule, for there is a wide range of alternative medicines that will definitely eliminate the virus in the near future.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
