Catherine Kolonko

With May officially Hepatitis Awareness Month, there is an active campaign underway designed to encourage people to get tested for hepatitis C. May 19 has been designated National Hepatitis Testing Day in the US for the fifth year running.

Researchers in Italy found that some patients who are successfully treated for the hepatitis C virus tend to live as long as others in the general population not infected with the disease.

Researchers assessed the risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma among patients who have been cured of the hepatitis C virus.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved a supplemental New Drug Application submitted by drug maker AbbVie for Viekira Pak without ribavirin to treat patients with chronic hepatitis C genotype 1b and compensated cirrhosis.

Patients with hepatitis C were two to five times more likely to develop some types of head and neck cancers, according to a study conducted by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The number of deaths associated with the hepatitis C virus climbed well above those of several other infectious diseases over a 10-year period ending in 2013, according to a recent government study.

A federal jury in California has ordered Gilead Sciences to pay Merck $200 million in damages for infringing upon patents related to compounds used in Sovaldi, the blockbuster hepatitis C drug.

The FDA has granted Roche expanded use of the company’s RNA test for hepatitis, which will allow the assay to be used as a diagnostic tool to confirm active infection in certain populations, the Swiss pharmaceutical company announced.

The hepatitis C virus has contributed to an increased rate in liver cancer and related deaths during a time when overall cancer deaths continue to decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hepatitis C treatment will now be made available to all US military veterans who are infected with the virus as a result of recent expanded federal funding.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced recently that labeling for the hepatitis C drug Olysio has been updated to reflect that higher plasma exposures have been recorded in patients of East Asian ancestry.

HCVGuidelines.org recently posted several updates related to the approval of Zepatier, including guidance on the role of testing patients for NS5A resistance-associated variants (RAVs) before they begin therapy with Zepatier to determine the dose and duration of the drug.

The Food and Drug Administration has given two drug companies approval to expand the use of their hepatitis C regimens to include treating patients with different types of advanced liver disease, and those coinfected with HIV.

A high consumption of cholesterol may lead to an increased risk for liver-related death and transplants among women who are infected with hepatitis C, according to a recent university study.

The European Commission has approved expanded use of a Bristol-Myers Squibb hepatitis C drug to include patient populations with decompensated cirrhosis, HIV-1 coinfection and post-liver transplant recurrence of the virus.

Merck's Zepatier is a once-daily pill prescribed over 12 or 16 weeks and is approved for treating patients with hepatitis C genotype-1 and genotype-4.

A multi-study analysis shows that a majority of patients with hepatitis C maintained sustained virological response five years after they were treated but researchers found higher risk of reinfection among patients in two subgroups.

Community health centers screen less than 10% of baby boomer patients (and more men than women) for hepatitis C, a much lower percentage than recommended by national guidelines revised in 2013, according to a recently published study.

The US Food and Drug Administration has granted Gilead Sciences priority review of a New Drug Application that seeks approval of its combination drug to treat all genotypes of chronic hepatitis C infection, the company announced.

Researchers say they have discovered a new human virus confirmed from genetic screenings of blood samples that appears to be linked to hepatitis C but it is unknown whether it can cause disease.

A group of health professionals and researchers have received grants to study treatments for substance use disorders and hepatitis C among people incarcerated in state prisons.

Treating hepatitis C sooner rather than later -- even at the early stages of liver fibrosis -- is worth the thousands of dollars it costs to pay for the new, more effective drugs, according to researchers who developed a model to assess historical treatment data.

A US Senate investigation found that drug maker Gilead Sciences sought to maximize profits of its blockbuster hepatitis C drug, without any significant consideration of the thousands of patients who could not afford its pricey pill.

Researchers have developed a method to screen for hepatitis C using a urine test that is faster and cheaper than traditional blood tests.

Healthcare workers have a much higher prevalence of chronic hepatitis C infection compared to the general population, according to a recently published study.

Gilead Sciences recently filed a New Drug Application with the US Food and Drug Administration for a single-tablet regimen to treat chronic infection of all forms of the hepatitis C virus.

A joint panel of liver disease experts recently updated industry guidelines for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) to remove priority tables and stick with a recommendation that nearly all patients with chronic infection of the virus be treated with direct-acting drugs.

The British health agency in charge of approving costs for drugs has given the thumbs up to Bristol-Myers Squibb to market its hepatitis C drug to include an indication for patients with genotype 3, reversing its recommendation from earlier this year.

New research highlights how government estimates on hepatitis C prevalence in the United States leave out about 1 million people from several groups not regularly included in the tally, say researchers from Cornell University.

Among men who have sex with men and became acutely infected with hepatitis C, the virus spontaneously cleared in nearly half the cases with higher percentages among men who were noninjection drug users than men who inject drugs, according to a prospective study out of Johns Hopkins University.