Telbivudine is an antiviral drug

Antiviral drug

Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used specifically for treating viral infections. Like antibiotics for bacteria, specific antivirals are used for specific viruses...

 used in the treatment of hepatitis B infection. It is marketed by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis

Novartis

Novartis International AG is a multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, ranking number three in sales among the world-wide industry...

 under the trade names Sebivo (Europe) and Tyzeka (United States). Clinical trial

Clinical trial

Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...

s have shown it to be significantly

Statistical significance

In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher....

 more effective than lamivudine

Lamivudine

Lamivudine is a potent nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor .It is marketed by GlaxoSmithKline with the brand names Zeffix, Heptovir, Epivir, and Epivir-HBV.Lamivudine has been used for treatment of chronic hepatitis B at a lower dose than for treatment of HIV...

 or adefovir

Adefovir

Adefovir dipivoxil, previously called bis-POM PMEA, with trade names Preveon and Hepsera, is an orally-administered nucleotide analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor .-Uses:...

, and less likely to cause resistance.

Telbivudine is a synthetic thymidine

Thymidine

Thymidine is a chemical compound, more precisely a pyrimidine deoxynucleoside. Deoxythymidine is the DNA nucleoside T, which pairs with deoxyadenosine in double-stranded DNA...

 nucleoside analogue; it is the L-isomer

Stereoisomerism

Stereoisomers are isomeric molecules that have the same molecular formula and sequence of bonded atoms , but that differ only in the three-dimensional orientations of their atoms in space. This contrasts with structural isomers, which share the same molecular formula, but the bond connections...

 of thymidine. It is taken once daily.

External links

• Tyzeka official website run by Novartis
  Novartis
  Novartis International AG is a multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, ranking number three in sales among the world-wide industry...
  
  Pharmaceuticals Corporation
• Telbivudine entry in RxList
• Sebivo Summary of Product Characteristics (from the EMEA website)