Hepatitis C News

Health risk behaviors, such as alcohol use, cigarette smoking and unhealthy diets, contributed equally toward mortality risk for patients with chronic hepatitis C as the infection itself, according to a recently published study.

In this guest commentary, Thelma King Thiel, RN, BA, former CEO of both the American Liver Foundation and the Hepatitis Foundation International, discusses prevention of hepatitis through education . After losing her son to biliary atresia, Theil focused on training health care providers about liver health. She recently founded the Liver Health Initiative to continue to fill the knowledge gap that exists about liver health.

Citizens of indigenous nations are up to 10 times more likely to have hepatitis B or hepatitis C than the general population in their respective countries, according to a press release on meta-analysis data presented at the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Viral Hepatitis in Anchorage, Alaska.

Nearly half of the Cherokee Nation American Indian population received screening for hepatitis C and approximately one-quarter of those with the infection are cured, according to a press release from the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Viral Hepatitis in Anchorage, Alaska, which coincides with the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on Aug. 9.

Nonspecialists such as primary care physicians and nurse practitioners can administer direct-acting antiviral therapy for hepatitis C virus as safely and effectively as specialists, which expands treatment access for challenging populations with HCV, according to recent findings.

Liver cirrhosis is a risk factor for direct-acting antiviral therapy failure in patients coinfected with hepatitis C virus and HIV, according to researchers.

Sustained virologic response correlated with reduced hepatic venous pressure gradient in patients with HCV-associated cirrhosis, according to a recently published study. However, clinically significant portal hypertension continued to persist in most patients.

Patients who achieved sustained virologic response after direct-acting antiviral treatment also had significantly lower all-cause mortality and lower incident rates of hepatocellular carcinoma compared with patients who did not achieve SVR.

Management of hepatitis C virus infection has drastically changed over the past 20 years — and even more so in the past 10 years — as a direct result of the evolution of pharmacologic therapy. HCV was discovered in 1989, and nearly 10 years later, in 1997, interferon was FDA approved as the first HCV treatment option. Unfortunately, interferon use was limited by inadequate rates of SVR and side effects. Standard of care shifted after the introduction of pegylated interferon and ribavirin, which overcame some of the pitfalls of interferon.

The FDA approved AbbVie’s Mavyret to treat adults with hepatitis C genotypes 1 through 6 without cirrhosis or with mild cirrhosis, including those who failed previous direct-acting antiviral treatment, according to an agency press release. The new approval indicates only 8 weeks of treatment needed in treatment-naive patients without cirrhosis.