Surveyed Physicians Will Treat Over 50 Percent of Hepatitis C Genotype 1-Infected Patients With the Protease Inhibitor ...( WALTHAM Mass. Aug. 4 /- ...),Health

WALTHAM, Mass., Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, based on profiles provided to them of emerging protease inhibitors, surveyed physicians indicate that they will prescribe Vertex/Johnson & Johnson/Mitsubishi Tanabe's telaprevir to more than 50 percent of their hepatitis C virus genotype 1-infected patients and will prescribe Schering-Plough's boceprevir to less than 30 percent of these patients. Although surveyed physicians perceive both telaprevir and boceprevir as efficacious drugs, they value (among other factors) telaprevir's shorter duration of treatment as compared to treatment duration using boceprevir.

The new Physician & Payer Forum report entitled Hepatitis C: Impact of and Receptivity to Novel Antivirals Among Payers and Prescribers finds that, among the surveyed physicians who indicate they will use both telaprevir and boceprevir for the treatment of hepatitis C virus genotype 1-infected treatment-naive patients, over 60 percent expect to start treatment for most or all of their patients with telaprevir. Surveyed physicians cite improved efficacy as the most important attribute influencing their prescribing decisions for hepatitis C virus.

"Eighty percent of the physicians we surveyed indicate that long-term efficacy is the most important attribute of novel therapies for hepatitis C virus," said Decision Resources Analyst Alexandra Makarova, M.D., Ph.D. "Nearly all surveyed physicians said that improvements in sustained virologic response in genotype 1-infected patients is the most important endpoint that will persuade them to use a novel treatment in place of currently-available therapies."

The report also finds that 40 percent of surveyed managed care organization's (MCOs) pharmacy directors indicate that they will place only one of t
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