After 12 weeks of treatment, patients were followed up for an 48 additional weeks. Additional details on study design are in the Supplementary Appendix. The study was conducted in accordance with the International Conference of Harmonisation guidelines, applicable regulations, and guidelines governing clinical study conduct and ethical principles that have their origin in the Declaration of Helsinki. All patients provided written informed consent. All this website authors had access to relevant data, and critically reviewed, revised,
and approved the manuscript. Adverse event assessments were reported from the time of study drug administration until 30 days after the last Selleckchem BIBW2992 dose and were judged as mild, moderate, or severe; clinical laboratory testing was performed at each study visit. Serious AEs were recorded throughout the study. Plasma samples were collected at screening and at each study visit and HCV-RNA levels were determined using
the Roche COBAS TaqMan real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction assay v2.0 (Roche Molecular Diagnostics, Pleasanton, CA) at a central laboratory. A fixed-sequence testing procedure was used to control type I error at 0.05. The primary efficacy end point was noninferiority of the SVR12 rates (assessed by HCV-RNA level < 25 IU/mL) in group 2 and group
1 to the historical SVR12 rate for telaprevir plus pegIFN/RBV in HCV genotype 1b–infected patients who were relapsers, partial responders, or null responders to previous pegIFN/RBV selleck chemicals llc treatment,4 adjusted for noncirrhotic patients in this study. Group 1 and group 2 noninferiority could be claimed if the SVR12 lower limit of the 95% confidence interval (CI) was greater than the upper limit of the CI for the historical rate minus a 10.5% noninferiority margin (64%). Further details of historical noninferiority calculations are provided in the Supplementary Appendix. Secondary efficacy end points in the fixed sequence included the following: (1) comparison of the percentage of patients with a decrease in hemoglobin level to less than the lower limit of normal at the end of treatment; (2) superiority of group 1 and group 2 to the historical rate for telaprevir plus pegIFN/RBV (75%); and (3) noninferiority of group 2 to group 1 using a 10.5% noninferiority margin for the SVR12 difference. The percentage of patients with on-treatment virologic failure and post-treatment relapse also was assessed.