According to a new study, maintenance therapy which uses low-dose of peginterferon seems ineffective in patients with chronic hepatitis C who didn’t respond to earlier round of treatment.

The researchers also found an astounding health decline in some patients during the course of the study.

“The therapy is used in the US as well as in many other countries, as a large number of doctors have adopted this method of treatment. But still its usability has not been proven and the results of our study show that it must be stopped,” says Dr. Adrian Di Bisceglie, the lead author of the study.

Almost 50% patients with chronic hepatitis C recover after undergoing preliminary peginterferon and ribavirn antiviral therapy and it lasts six to eleven months. In non-respondent patients improvement has been seen, but the virus doesn’t seem to be eliminated.

In this study, 1050 non-responding patients who had advanced liver disease were included. Low doses of peginterferon were given to 50% of the patients to hold back the hepatitis C virus and slowdown the development of the disease. Other patients were included in a control group and both groups were followed for 3.5 years.

The researchers found that almost 30% of patients in the two groups were found with the conditions like liver cancer, liver failure or death. Similarly, researchers noted that the patients with mild cirrhosis at the beginning of the study, 10 to 12 percent among them had developed serious liver disease. These findings were quite astounding for the researchers.