Cholesterol drugs called statins may help treat hepatitis C infections, Japanese researchers reported Friday.
Tests in lab dishes suggest that some statin drugs may help stop the hepatitis C virus from replicating, they wrote in the journal Hepatology, published by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
An estimated 170 million people worldwide are infected with the hepatitis C virus. The standard treatment is a combination therapy of interferon and ribavirin but it only helps about 55 percent of patients.
The rest risk progression to cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Masanori Ikeda of Okayama University in Japan and colleagues tested several statin drugs against the virus in lab dishes.
All the drugs except pravastatin interfered with the virus to some degree. Fluvastatin, sold by Novartis under the name Lescol, had the strongest effect, they reported.
It may be that certain proteins are required for the hepatitis C virus to replicate and that some statins block the action of these proteins, the researchers said.
They tested the statins along with with interferon, and found each worked even better when combined with the second drug.
"We clearly demonstrated that co-treatment of interferon and fluvastatin was an overwhelmingly effective treatment," the researchers wrote.
Statins — which include Pfizer Inc.'s $10 billion-a-year Lipitor, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Pravachol and Merck and Co. Inc.'s Zocor — are the world's best-selling drugs, taken by millions to reduce the risk of heart attack.
But they appear to affect many biological processes. An expert proposed last month that they may affect influenza viruses, including bird flu, and other research has shown they reduce the risk of cataracts.
Generic statins are available in many countries and have become increasingly inexpensive.