Among many drugs that are manufactured, Gilead science’s harvoni has stood out as one of the most promising drugs to cope with hepatitis C. It is an FDA approved drug, and is a combination of sofosbuvir and ledipasvir in concentration of 400 and 90 mg. This drug is administered in adults and children above 12 years with hepatitis C infection and liver damage.
What is harvoni?
It is an antiviral drug that is effective in treating the viral infection caused by the hepatitis C virus. Hepatitis C virus attacks the liver cells and causes inflammation of the liver cells, which can further lead to liver infection, liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. With the daily administration of the harvoni, the viral replication can be stopped by both the drugs acting as an inhibitors of polymerases that are the main agent of genome replication. As the genome replication is prohibited, the viral particles cannot multiply and infect other cells, thus reducing the infection significantly over time.
VELAKAST from Gandhi Medicos, effective for Hepatitis C, is a fixed-dose combination tablet containing sofosbuvir and velpatasvir for oral administration. Sofosbuvir is a nucleotide analog HCV NS5B polymerase inhibitor and velpatasvir is an NS5A inhibitor. Each tablet contains 400 mg sofosbuvir and 100 mg velpatasvir.
Effective antiviral
Harvonis is to date one of the most effective drugs, as it not only helps in treating the genotype 1 hepatitis C but also other viral genotypes of Hepatitis C, like genotype 4, 5, and 6. Harvoni has been used, researched and investigated on almost 2000 adults with hepatitis C whose livers were working fine, and the results were seen within 12 to 24 weeks. Almost 95 percent of the patients showed complete eradication of the virus within 12 weeks. It worked on people with compensated liver cirrhosis that is when the liver is scarred but is working fine, but stopped at around 24 weeks. It is also effective in decompensated liver cirrhosis (scarred liver and not working properly) and also in liver transplant cases. Also, harvoni has shown significant effects when administered for hepatitis C genotype 3 virus, but in that case, mostly it needs to be given with ribavirin as well.
