Triple therapy of interferon and ribavirin with zinc supplementation for patients with chronic hepatitis C:A randomized controlled clinical trial

AIM:To study the therapeutic effect of interferon(IFN)and ribavirin with zinc supplement on patients withchronic hepatitis C viral(HCV)infection.METHODS:A total of 102 patients confirmedhistologically to have chronic HCV infection withgenotype 1b and more than 100 KIU/mL of HCV wererandomly assigned to each arm of the study and eachreceived 10 million units of pegylated interferon(IFN-alpha-2b)daily for 4 wk followed by the same dose everyother day for 20 wk plus ribavirin(600 or 800 mg/ddepending on body weight),with or without polaprezinc(150 mg/d)orally for 24 wk.The primary endpoint wassustained virological response(SVR)defined as negativeHCV-RNA in the serum 6 mo after treatment.RESULTS:There were no differences in the clinicalbackground between the two groups except for morefemales in the dual therapy group than in the othergroup(P<0.05).SVR was observed in 33.3% of thetriple therapy group and 33.3% of the dual therapygroup.The side effects were almost the same in bothgroups except for gastrointestinal symptoms,which wereless in the triple therapy group(P=0.019).CONCLUSION:Considered together,triple therapy ofzinc plus IFN and ribavirin for HCV infection patients withgenotype 1b and high viral load is not better than dualtherapy except for lower incidence of gastrointestinalside effects.