From trials to a real hospital setting: effectiveness of pegylated interferon-alpha-2b/ribavirin combination therapy for naïve chronic hepatitis C patients.

Registration trials regarding pegylated interferon treatment of hepatitis C have created great expectations for improved results, but there is little information on actual outcomes in everyday hospital practice. We aimed to define the effectiveness of this treatment in a hospital setting. Seventy-four naïve patients with hepatitis C treated with 12 kD-pegylated-interferon-alpha-2-b/ribavirin (PEG-IFN) were retrospectively analyzed in comparison with 54 patients treated with IFN-alpha-2-b/ribavirin (STANDARD IFN) and with results of three main registration trials.