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Rebecca Voelker
JAMA contributor

JAMA. 1998;280:1393.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Higher daily doses of interferon alpha may be more effective than standard treatment for patients with hepatitis C, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and collaborators elsewhere have reported that, in a group of 23 patients with hepatitis C, daily doses of 10 million or 15 million units for 2 weeks were the most effective in decreasing viral load. The standard treatment approach is 3 million units of interferon three times a week.

The researchers observed a rapid, dose-related decline in viral load during the first 24 to 48 hours of high-dose treatment with interferon. During the next 12 days of treatment, the viral decline slowed, and infected liver cells began to die. The researchers found that it took from 1.7 to 70 days for the infected cells to die. They also reported that patients with high baseline viral load . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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