Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock

Hepatitis B kills more than a million people a year and has no cure. A new drug may have moved researchers one step closer to changing that.

The drug, bepirovirsen, cleared the hepatitis B virus entirely in roughly 1 in 5 patients with chronic hepatitis B infections. For the nearly 240 million people worldwide living with chronic hepatitis B, it represents the first realistic prospect of a finite treatment rather than a lifetime of pills.A ‘Functional Cure’The trials, published in May in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 1,834 adults with chronic hepatitis B infection who were not suffering from liver cirrhosis from 29 countries across Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Americas. Participants were randomly assigned to receive weekly injections of bepirovirsen or a placebo for 24 weeks. All were already on standard oral antiviral medication to suppress the virus.We had a problem loading this article. Please enable javascript or use a different browser. If the issue persists, please visit our help center.