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PCORI awards $14 million for research on treating PWID with HCV
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The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute announced it has awarded a grant worth $14 million to Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, to fund research focusing on how to best treat injection drug users who have hepatitis C virus infection.
The research will be led by Alain Litwin, MD, attending physician, internal medicine, Montefiore Health System and professor of medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and will include investigating which treatment model works best for treating patients with HCV who also inject drugs (PWID) and also determine why some patients develop resistance to certain therapies for the treatment of HCV, according to a press release.
“This study has major implications for controlling hepatitis C infection and re-infection rates,” Litwin said in the release. “Unfortunately, people who inject drugs rarely get effective, safe treatments because there is a concern that they won’t take their medication or that they might become re-infected. Determining the best model of care will help us avert grave consequences of chronic infection for many people and reduce the spread of the virus in the communities we serve and beyond.”
The study, titled “Patient-Centered Models of HCV Care for People Who Inject Drugs,” will include 1,000 PWID who have HCV and will be used in comparing two models of care: directly observed treatment, where patients take medication in front of a staff member, and the Patient Navigator model, where patients take their medications home and receive support and education from public health workers, according to the release.
The release further states that the research will be conducted in conjunction with John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Harvard Medical School, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, among others.
Approximately 146,500 people living in New York City and 2.7 million Americans have chronic HCV, with an estimated half unaware that they are infected, according to the release.
Disclosures: Healio.com/Hepatology was unable to determine relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.