Hepatitis C is much more common among black Americans than white Americans, but blacks are often underrepresented in clinical trials of hepatitis C drugs, and blacks haven't responded as well to drugs in some studies. Researchers at four universities and the Roche pharmaceutical company's labs tried out a hepatitis C drug combination on a group of blacks with hepatitis C.

What the researchers wanted to know: How well does the combination of peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin work at controlling hepatitis C in blacks?

What they did: Seventy-eight black and 28 white patients with hepatitis C (genotype 1) who'd never had interferon were enrolled in the trial. They were injected with peginterferon once a week and took ribavirin orally. Peginterferon (pegylated interferon) is a longer-lasting version of interferon, a protein that boosts the immune system. Ribavirin is an antiviral drug. Peginterferon with ribavirin is the standard treatment for chronic hepatitis C.

What they found: After the treatment, 26 percent of black patients and 39 percent of white patients had undetectable levels of hepatitis C virus in their blood. Twenty-six percent, although it may not sound like much, is the highest response rate anyone has measured in black patients. Whites had more side effects than blacks. No one knows why blacks don't respond as well to the drugs. There could be some difference in immune systems, or the lower success could be because blacks have higher levels of testosterone , or could be because the black patients in this trial were, on average, heavier than the white patients.

What it means to you: Finally, a treatment that seems to work better for blacks—but still not that well. Although the combination therapy worked for some, blacks with chronic hepatitis C infections may still be less likely to respond to treatment than whites.

Caveats: There weren't very many patients in the study, so it's hard to be statistically sure of these results. The research was funded by Roche Laboratories.

Find out more: The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (http://www.aasld.org) publishes the journal this study appeared in.

Viral hepatitis from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

Read the article: Jeffers, L.J., Cassidy, W., Howell, C.D., Hu, S., and K.R. Reddy. Peginterferon Alfa-2a (40 kd) and Ribavirin for Black American Patients With Cronic HCV Genotype 1." Hepatology. June 2004, Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 1702-1708. Free abstract at National Library of Medicine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/