Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and ribavirin cured high rates of people coinfected with HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV). Participants with genotypes 1, 3 and 4 of hep C who were being treated for the first time (treatment naive) and participants with genotypes 2 and 3 who had failed a previous regimen received 24 weeks of treatment. Treatment-naive participants with genotype 2 were treated for 12 weeks. Almost all of the study members were also taking antiretrovirals to treat HIV, and 20 percent had cirrhosis.

Between 83 percent and 91 percent of the participants in each category were cured of the virus.

“I think the regimen is a paradigm shift,” says Andrew H. Talal, MD, a hepatologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, “because I think we now have the ability for improved efficacy, improved side effects, no or at least no resistance reported to date, and elimination of interferon.”