Medication to Treat Chronic Hepatitis C

Chronic Hepatitis C

Hepatitis is a condition that causes inflammation of the liver due to viral infection. The Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) causes Hepatitis C, which spreads through contaminated blood. Hepatitis C can both be acute and chronic, depending on its severity. Chronic Hepatitis C can lead to chronic conditions if left untreated, like liver necrosis, liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and even death.

Acute Hepatitis is a short-term disease in which generally the virus gets clear on its own by the body, but most people will develop a chronic infection.

Whereas Chronic Hepatitis can last for years or maybe lifelong and can grow more fatal if untreated.

Needles are the biggest risk factors for the transmission of chronic Hepatitis C. Therefore, the people who use syringes in day-to-day life are at higher risk to get chronic diseases like the people who inject illicit drugs for abuse, get tattooed, etc. Other risk factors can be having HIV, being born to a mother who had Hepatitis C infection, etc.

Hepatitis C is also known as “a silent virus” as decades can pass by, and it can remain in your body without causing symptoms. Due to the lack of symptoms, approximately 75%-85% of HCV infections cases become chronic. Although the acute phase doesn’t show any symptoms when they appear, they can be fever, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, dark urine, clay-colored stool, jaundice, joint pain.

The treatment of this Chronic disease includes antiviral medications according to the severity of the disease, if the infection has become lethal, the last choice can be a liver transplant.

Ledifos Tablet is currently a very well-suited medication for the treatment of chronic Hepatitis C. It contains Ledipasvir (90mg) + Sofobusvir (400mg). The combination of Ledipasvir and Sofosbuvir is due to the synergistic effect. Both these drugs inhibit the virus Hepatitis C and restrict them from causing more damage to the liver. Ledipasvir absorbs within 4 hours and 30 minutes after entering the system. The binding affinity of 99.8% binds efficiently with HCV cells without any fuss. It begins its activities by specifically restricting the multiplication of viral cells by inhibiting NS5A protein.

Once these activities are done, and the viral load is suppressed, more than 50% of the drug is expelled from the body in 47 hours. Both of them have exactly the same mechanism of action and work synergistically together against the Hepatitis C Virus. Although Sofosbuvir differs in some aspects, absorption time is less up to 30 minutes to 2 hours with 60%-65% of binding affinity with HCV cells. Sofosbuvir inhibits NS5B protein, and its excretion time is somewhere up to 40 minutes to 27 hours for 50% of the drug. Although Ledifos tablet has a favorable safety profile, it has minimal side effects but can still show side effects like fatigue, headache, weakness. Other severe side effects which require immediate medical attention are bradycardia and hepatitis B viral reactivation.

Although there is no vaccine for chronic hepatitis C, the treatment has improved to a really good level, providing the patients with relief. The awareness of the disease will also help inhibit the chronic phase and further fatal conditions to the liver.