Hepatitis C News

A short course of direct-acting anti-viral prophylaxis may be effective in preventing transmission of hepatitis C virus from kidney donors to recipients, according to study results presented virtually at the American Transplant Congress.

Universal hepatitis C virus screening in EDs with the ability to opt out showed that nearly half of infections were identified in people born after 1965, according to findings published in MMWR.

Epclusa is now available for the treatment of children with any of the six genotypes of hepatitis C virus after obtaining approval from the FDA, according to a press release.

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.

I knew from the earliest stages that if I pursued medicine as a career, infectious disease was the only choice for me. As a child, my favorite storybook was The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur, which recounts the discovery of the rabies vaccine. The idea that there were these mysterious entities called viruses and the human immune system had ways to combat them was completely captivating. As I grew older and learned about infectious diseases such as HIV, this fascination only increased. By the time I decided to go to medical school, I had already consumed scores of books on Ebola, Lassa fever, antimicrobial resistance and anything else I could get my hands on. In residency, I was mocked for carrying C.J. Peters’ Virus Hunter in my lab coat pocket, whereas the pockets of my fellow residents were teaming with reference books that allowed them to function on the wards.

Study findings from California showed that life expectancy at age 20 years increased by almost 2 years among patients infected with hepatitis C virus between the interferon treatment and the interferon-free era, although researchers reported that the increase was not statistically significant. However, data showed life expectancy gains for some subgroups, including Hispanics.

Data from a recent study showed the benefits of initiating opioid agonist therapy and hepatitis C treatment at the same time in patients with opioid use disorder and ongoing injection drug use. Benefits included a high rate of SVR and lower rates of drug use, HIV risk-taking behaviors and overdose.

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