Hepatitis C News

The Canadian Treatment Action Council launched a call-to-action campaign to end hepatitis C in Canada, according to a white paper published by the organization. The authors focused on treatment access policy issues in Canada that must be addressed to achieve the WHO elimination targets by 2030.

On Jan. 23, 2017, Philadelphia city officials announced their support for supervised drug injection sites to combat the ongoing opioid epidemic, which has led to increased rates of infectious disease transmissions such as hepatitis C and HIV.

Results of a recent study showed a significant correlation between the increase of acute hepatitis C cases in the U.S. and the country’s current opioid epidemic. Acute HCV and admissions for opioid injection drug use increased significantly among individuals aged 18 years to 39 years, both men and women, and specific ethnicities.

Direct-acting antiviral therapy was safe and highly effective in patients coinfected with HIV and hepatitis C, according to a recently published study. Factors that negatively affected sustained virologic response rates included HIV-related immunosuppression, HCV RNA load, severity of liver disease and suboptimal DAA-based regimens.

Hepatitis C virus continues to affect millions of people worldwide. WHO estimates that 71 million people are living with chronic HCV infection, and about 399,000 people die from complications of the virus each year, mostly from cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Patients with hepatitis C without advanced liver disease who achieved sustained virologic response with direct-acting antiviral therapy had significantly reduced all-cause mortality rates compared with both treated patients who did not achieve SVR and untreated patients, according to a recently published data.

As governments across the nation focus on the opioid epidemic and the prevention of overdoses, the leading infectious disease organizations issued statements urging Congress to provide $100 million for the CDC’s Viral Hepatitis programs to prevent further outbreaks of hepatitis and HIV due to injection drug use.

Combining the efforts of public health and family practices were effective in more patients receiving hepatitis tests, but did not result in more chronic hepatitis C diagnoses, according to findings published in the Annals of Family Medicine.

Since the introduction of direct-acting antivirals, more patients with hepatitis C are achieving sustained virologic response than ever before. Even patients who failed previous interferon or DAA therapy have the opportunity for secondary treatment with newly developed drugs.

Sovaldi with ribavirin was safe and effective among a cohort of Japanese patients with hepatitis C genotype 2, according to a recently published study. However, renal dysfunction correlated significantly with a lower rate of sustained virologic response.