Hepatitis C News

PHOENIX — Since 2016, kidneys from donors with hepatitis C virus are being discarded less and transplanted more, according to a speaker at Cutting Edge of Transplantation: Transplant Summit.

Low-dose aspirin use appeared associated with significantly lower risk for hepatocellular carcinoma and lower liver-related mortality among patients with chronic viral hepatitis, according to results of a retrospective study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

SVR, which has been challenged in regard to its association with clinical outcomes, has been confirmed as a prognosis-altering endpoint in patients with hepatitis C virus, according to findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Transplanting kidneys from donors with hepatitis C virus into uninfected recipients reduced costs to the health care system, while also increasing life expectancy for recipients, according to this study.

Drug-drug interactions, or DDIs, affect about 40% of patients with hepatitis C virus being treated with direct-acting antivirals, or DAAs, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. Researchers said lower DDI potential among modern DAA regimens is counteracted by changing patient characteristics.

Using data from more than 840,000 health care encounters, researchers estimated that around 90% of people who inject drugs missed opportunities for HIV or hepatitis C virus testing during a recent 8-year period — especially rural males seeking care for skin infections or endocarditis.

An analysis of peer-reviewed articles provided global prevalence estimates of hepatitis C virus in children, according to data from a modelling study.

For patients with both chronic kidney disease and the hepatitis C virus, an education and support tool increased knowledge of the conditions, thereby making patients more certain of — and engaged with — their treatment decisions, according to the results of this study.

Implementation of a multifaceted hepatitis C care pathway improved screening and linkage to care rates, especially among baby boomers, or those born between 1945 and 1965.

The “direct-acting antiviral era” for hepatitis C has been a novel step forward in medicine with several regimens providing cure rates of 95% or higher and many available as secondary treatments for patients whose initial treatment failed. With this highly curative option, researchers have focused on evaluating opportunities to use hepatitis-C infected organs to increase the transplant donor pool.