Hepatitis C Information - The Hepatitis C is a disease that affects the liver mainly. It can provoke cirrhosis and ultimately, develop liver failure and liver cancer, among other things. So, the importance to treat it is essential.
A new pill has been approved last Friday by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) called Harvoni. It is a combination of the approved drug Sovaldi and Ledispavir, a new drug.
Harvoni is meant to be taken once a day, according to WebMd, and the great benefit that it has is that apparently it cures Hepatitis C completely after a few months of use.
It has been tested and ninety-four percent of the people who took it got cured after three months of use. The rest of them got cured in the span of time of six months, apparently.
The last percentage of people reacted later to the drug due to the fact that their liver had already suffered a great deal. Most of them had cirrhosis already. But this means only one thing: Harvoni truly treats Hepatitis C to the core.
"There are no significant side effects with this drug. And no serious drug-to-drug interactions," the chief of Hepatology at the North Shore University in Manhasset shared.
All of these shows only benefits to the medication. Everything seems perfect as it's effective and the side effects are under control.
There is one backside, though. And that is the price.
$94,500 is the cost for a 12-week regime of the Harvoni drug, as The Wall Street Journal Noted. That is more than most people can afford.
Currently, there is a discussion going on about if insurance companies will significantly drop the costs so that people can actually afford to take this drug and even Sovaldi which is pretty expensive on its own.
"I hope the insurance will cover it. If you look at cost benefit, the cost is high upfront, but it saves healthcare costs over the long term," Bernstein, the chief of Hepatology added.
Still, if Hepatitis C could be cured, then a lot of diseases that start by this one would disappear in a couple of years.
