[Correspondence] HCV response-guided therapy: is shorter always better? – Authors' reply

We thank Lei Xu and Wenzhe Zhao for their interesting observations focused on response-guided therapy in the era of direct-acting antivirals. We support their view that strategies proposed to date to select those patients with hepatitis C infection who could be cured with 4 weeks (ultra-short) treatment are still not able to offer high enough cure rates to be recommended routinely. However, it is worth noting that, in our trial,1 the 80% sustained virological response at week 12 rates in patients selected for 4 weeks of treatment, based on day 7 viral load under the lower limit of quantification, is the highest of studies to date.