Ulcerative Colitis

... PharmaLive: Schering-Plough Initiates PEG-INTRON Maintenance Study in Patients Coinfected With Hepatitis C and HIV REGISTERED USERS TODAY ON PHARMALIVE.COM Schering-Plough Initiates PEG-INTRON Maintenance Study in Patients Coinfected With Hepatitis C and HIV ENDURE Study to Assess Low-Dose PEG-INTRON Monotherapy in Helping to Prevent Hepatitis C Disease Progression in Coinfected Patients AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, January 13, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Schering-Plough announced today that it is initiating a large multinational clinical trial to evaluate the use of low-dose PEG-INTRON(R) (peginterferon alfa-2b) maintenance monotherapy in preventing or delaying hepatitis C disease progression and thus potentially reducing the occurrence of clinical events such as liver transplantation, liver cancer and death in cirrhotic patients with hepatitis C who are coinfected with HIV.

Known as the ENDURE study, the trial is targeted to enroll 448 patients at approximately 80 sites worldwide, including centers in the United States, Europe and Canada.

Approximately one third of HIV patients, or about 10 million people worldwide, are coinfected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV.(1) Liver disease caused by chronic hepatitis C is now a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among HIV-infected patients in the developed world.(2,3) Furthermore, studies have shown that HCV can aggravate the course of HIV infection.(4) "The principal goal for treating patients infected with hepatit...

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