Hepatitis C treatments don't seem to work as well in blacks of African descent

Hepatitis C treatments don't seem to work as well in blacks of African descent...as in other racial and ethnic groups.

Peginterferon alfa-2b is now called Unitron-PEG. It was called PEG-Intron until May 2003. In combo with ribavirin it's Pegetron.

It is effective in 52% of whites...but only 19% of some blacks. Researchers used to think the difference was due to the type of hepatitis C virus that's more common in blacks...but now researchers are rethinking this theory.

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