Hepatitis C

The first-in-human trial of VRON-0200, a novel immunotherapy for chronic hepatitis B virus, presented at the APSAL meeting, demonstrates a promising safety and tolerability profile.

A recent survey found telemedicine-based HCV treatment at a syringe access program could improve access to treatment among people who inject drugs.

Test your knowledge of the 2023 American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases/Infectious Diseases Society of America HCV guideline!

Curtis discusses findings from her recent health economic study about the cost-effectiveness of treating perinatal HCV earlier, a growing concern amid rising rates of HCV in reproductive-aged adults.

To acknowledge World Kidney Day, our latest episode of Crisis Point focuses on the stigma surrounding the use of HCV-positive donor kidneys amid the ongoing organ shortage crisis, with the perspective of a pair of experts and an HCV donor kidney recipient.

Treatment with DAA therapy at 3 years of age was associated with better health outcomes and cost savings versus deferring initiation to 6 years of age or older.

Curative DAA therapy did not completely normalize immune activation and inflammatory biomarkers in individuals with a history of injection drug use and HCV infection.

Seropositivity was associated with greater albuminuria but not peripheral artery disease in a cohort of patients ≥ 50 years of age with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Our February 2024 month in review highlights some of our top hepatology content from the past few weeks, including pipeline updates, phase 2/3 trial data, and new research in liver diseases.

Results showed 95.8% of patients who were treated for HCV with DAA therapy and underwent renal transplantation did not experience HCV recurrence.

Results suggest a high prevalence of fatty liver in adults with chronic HCV, which was significantly associated with central obesity, elevated blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome.

Cross-sectional survey results suggest most providers are recommending HCV screening based on patient risk factors rather than universally for all patients 18-79 years of age.

NAFLD, ALD, liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, and recently diagnosed viral hepatitis were all associated with a greater risk of cataract.

All patients who received an HCV+ organ achieved SVR12 and had lower rates of rejection and chronic lung allograft dysfunction compared to uninfected donor organ recipients.

Zhang discusses the consequences of stigmatizing language for substance use disorders and reasons gastroenterologists and hepatologists may be falling behind.

Retreatment with voxilaprevir/velpatasvir/sofosbuvir in patients with HCV and prior DAA failure is effective but may be impacted by hepatocellular carcinoma, cirrhosis, and genotype 3.

Stigmatizing language was found on 88% of transplant center websites and was most prevalent when discussing alcohol-associated hepatitis and cirrhosis.

The review explored the global epidemiology of HCV in patients on dialysis, providing novel estimations of its prevalence and case fatality rate in this patient population.

Findings suggest the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma may persist in patients with HCV, even after achieving SVR with direct-acting antiviral therapy.

HCV seroprevalence and antigen positivity were both low, suggesting universal birth cohort screening may not be necessary or cost-effective.

Results of the systematic review and meta-analysis support the use of pan-genotypic DAA regimens for the treatment of chronic HCV in adolescents and children ≥ 3 years of age.

The editorial team’s monthly recap of the top news in hepatology features research emphasizing women’s health in liver disease, a look at some less-recognized health benefits associated with achieving SVR, and promising approaches for preventing and treating hepatic conditions.

Study results called attention to the negative impact of living in a rural residence and a highly dependent neighborhood on HCV screening by 2 years of age in children born to HCV RNA positive mothers.

Results showed a 12% incidence of HCV in pregnancy with a preterm birth rate nearly double the national average, although no statistically significant difference in preterm birth rates was observed between HCV-positive and HCV-negative patients.

Test your knowledge with this clinician quiz! In this quiz, we test your knowledge of updates in the management of hepatitis C virus based on the AASLD/IDSA 2023 guidance update.

Results highlight the benefit of achieving sustained virological response with DAAs for decreasing patients’ risk of carotid atherosclerosis and peripheral artery disease, especially among those with severe fibrosis.

Sustained virologic response and several sociodemographic factors were found to be significantly associated with long-term improvements in health-related quality of life in patients with HCV.

The XGBoost machine learning model outperformed other AI and logistic regression models for predicting DAA failure, with an AUROC of 1.000 in the training dataset and 0.803 in the validation dataset.

Patients in the integrated and standard care treatment arms reported similar SCL-10 scores indicative of psychological stress and symptom burden, both at baseline and after the completion of DAA treatment.

Although the overall response rate among the cohort was 96.4%, this figure dropped as low as 66.7% when accounting for male gender, GT3 infection, cirrhosis, obesity, and non-response to previous therapy.