Patients diagnosed with hepatitis C who do not respond to standard drug therapy may not respond at all to future treatments, according to a new study.

In a report published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, these unresponsive patients are then put in maintenance therapy in the hope the long-term treatment will keep the condition from getting worse. However, the study also found this therapy to be unhelpful and possibly harmful to patients.

"To the extent there are still patients out there who are on this form of maintenance therapy, there is a real take-home message: It should be stopped," lead author Dr. Adrian M. Di Bisceglie told the New York Times.

Typically, the treatment for hepatitis C calls for patients to take peginterferon and ribavirin, which can clear the virus from approximately half the patients. The drugs do have side effects such as fever, fatigue and depression.

Because drugs and therapy appear to be useless for some hepatitis C patients, some people may want to look at natural drugs for treatment.
Some patients in the past have used milk thistle, thymus extract and colloidal silver.