Treatment of hepatitis B by nucleoside analogs: still a reality

The past year has seen the unfortunate and tragic outcome of the fialuridine clinical trials, which left five patients dead and raised many questions regarding future development of nucleoside analogs for treatment of hepatitis B virus infection. Still, from this class of drugs, which remain by far the mainstay for treatment of both RNA and DNA infections, have emerged novel derivatives that appear very promising against the hepatitis B virus. In particular, a novel generation of nucleosides with an unnatural configuration should provide the expected selectivity of safe and efficacious antiviral therapies