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Mortality rate during interferon alfa‐ribavirin combination therapy of chronic hepatitis C
Author(s) -
Soza Alejandro,
Hoofnagle Jay H.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
hepatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.488
H-Index - 361
eISSN - 1527-3350
pISSN - 0270-9139
DOI - 10.1053/jhep.2003.50213
Subject(s) - ribavirin , medicine , diabetes mellitus , gastroenterology , chronic hepatitis , hepatitis c , family medicine , gerontology , library science , immunology , endocrinology , virus , computer science
It has been drawn to our attention that the numbers of deaths that have occurred during combination therapy of chronic hepatitis C were stated incorrectly in the discussion section of our article entitled “Neutropenia during combination therapy of interferon alfa and ribavirin for chronic hepatitis C.”1 In the first sentence on page 1278 we stated, “Only 1 of the 23 deaths reported from these studies was caused by infection.” Actually, in the 3 large, multicenter studies of combination therapy with interferon alfa-2b and ribavirin that were referenced in the previous sentence,2-4 there were only 3 deaths during treatment and 3 during the follow-up period, none of which were caused by infection. The report of 23 deaths was taken from a review article5 on adverse events from combination therapy that included the deaths from these 3 trials as well as subsequent open-access studies that incorporated information on more than 25,000 treated patients. Thus, the mortality rate associated with combination therapy is less than 0.1% and not in the range of 1%, which was suggested by our statement. We apologize for this error and the confusion it may have caused.