Hepatitis C News

The donor pool for heart transplants can potentially be expanded now that the infection from donor-derived hepatitis C is curable and well tolerated, according to a study published in JAMA Cardiology.

Data from a large, real-world study contributed to the growing safety and efficacy evidence of transplanting hepatitis C-infected organs into aviremic patients in the direct-acting antiviral era.

Patients with current or prior hepatitis C infection were willing to engage in alcohol intervention including counseling and referral to treatment when encouraged by liver medical providers, according to data published in Hepatology.

According to study results published in JAMA, during a nearly 6-year period, only 30% of 13- to 21-year-olds with identified opioid, cocaine or amphetamine use who accessed U.S. federally qualified health centers in 19 states were tested for hepatitis C virus, suggesting a need to improve screening.

Patients who failed to achieve sustained virologic response after initial treatment for hepatitis C achieved high cure rates during retreatment after switching from an NS5A inhibitor direct-acting antiviral to a protease inhibitor.

ORLANDO — African Americans with lymphoma and hepatitis C virus should be treated for both disease states to improve response to lymphoma treatment, with most improved results seen in patients with aggressive lymphoma, according to a poster presenter at the ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition.

NEW YORK — Kevin A. Ault, MD, OB/GYN and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, presented an overview of his talk on maternal immunization at the Infectious Diseases in Children Symposium.

I fell in love with immunology as a first-year medical student at Harvard in a class taught by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Baruj Benacerraf. It was the mid-1980s, and the HIV epidemic was emerging in all its perplexing horror, the virus devastating the immune system through unknown means. I had friends who were stigmatized and dying from HIV, which made it personal. When I was a third-year medical student in 1987, Chip Schooley was my ID attending. He was involved in clinical trials to treat HIV as well as laboratory research to understand HIV immunology. His brilliance and passion for patient care and research were inspiring, and that is when I became hooked on ID! I decided then that I would dedicate my career to fighting the HIV epidemic through clinical care and research to unravel how HIV evades and depletes the immune system. I was fortunate that Chip recruited me to perform my ID fellowship at the University of Colorado and then to join the faculty. Although there were many challenges, the path has been fulfilling. I would encourage anyone who wishes to pursue an academic career in ID to focus on what they think is important and find good mentors!

BOSTON — The Hepatitis C Leaders in Primary Care program, or HELP-C, engaged primary care physicians to successfully screen and treat veterans with hepatitis C through comanagement with a specialist liver team, according to a study presented at The Liver Meeting 2019.

ATLANTA — Less than a quarter of patients in a national rheumatology registry were screened for hepatitis B or C prior to initiating biologics or a new synthetic DMARDs, despite their potential increased risk for viral hepatitis reactivation, according to data presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting.