Hepatitis C

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.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has awarded a $14 million grant to a research team at Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine to determine how best to treat hepatitis C virus (HCV) among people who have used injectable drugs.

Hepatologists around the world are seeing an influx of patients with various liver conditions including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Finding ways to treat these patients has become a growing area of the field. These issues are the same whether doctors are treating military patients or those in civilian practice alike.

When treating liver disease every advantage can help doctors get their patients the care they need before the condition progresses further. A recent study looked at the potential of developing a scoring system to look at risks for this patient population.

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

In the past patients with alcoholic liver disease may not have been considered viable options for liver transplants. A recent study looked at whether an artificial device could help these patients return to a normal quality of life.

While there are currently no approved treatments for nonalcoholic steatoheptitis there are medications working their way through the approval process including at least a few in phase III studies.

It may be the second most common genotype of hepatitis C but for patients diagnosed with genotype 3 it is also proving to be considerably harder to treat than genotype 1 which has a cure rate near 90%.

When teenage boys in Sweden were required to take part in the conscription process for the country's armed forces only a small percentage were considered overweight or obese. As a result researchers were able to make a connection between those patients and those who developed serious liver disease later in life.

With a population of more than 1.4 million people it is important for patients to be treated as effectively as possible to help their own health as well as prevent their conditions from spreading. A new study looked at bringing help to hepatitis C patients in this growing country.

In the effort to help the growing number of people with liver disease new medications are constantly being developed. This is true for a wide range of conditions including cirrhosis and fibrosis.

Due in part to the high prices direct-acting antivirals for hepatitis C infection, many Medicaid programs are not offering them to injection drug users, nor are some states and institutions seeking these patients out for testing to see if they have the virus. But a new study shows that even when drug-users do not give up their habit, they can be safely and effectively treated for the lethal virus.

A considerable amount of research has been done looking at how liver disease can progress in patients, but a recent study looked at possible regression in conditions like cirrhosis and fibrosis.

Price is still the main obstacle in getting hepatitis C direct-acting antivirals to nations that need them, panelists agreed at a "global challenges" forum at the 2015 Liver Meeting in San Francisco, CA.

The annual US cost of HCV treatment before direct-acting antivirals was $7 billion and since then it has grown to $21 billion, but that cost should drop when generics arrive, to $14 million annually by 2030. Making it a rare disease over the next 25 years will take $106 billion, researchers project.

All is not lost when hepatitis C genotype 1 patients fail to benefit from treatment with direct-acting antivirals (DAAs). Reporting at the 2015 Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA, Fred Poordad, MD, of the Texas Liver Institute/University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, TX, and colleagues said they had success retreating patients who had failed DAAs.

One of the largest populations of patients with hepatitis C is those who use injectable drugs. Despite this, many of these patients do not receive the medications they need to treat their conditions.

When a doctor's prescription is denied by an insurance company it can create issues not only for that doctor but also the patient beyond what the medication is being prescribed for.

Management of alcoholic hepatitis consists of a multidisciplinary approach including alcohol cessation, fluid and electrolyte correction, treatment of alcohol withdrawal, and pharmacological therapy based on the severity of the disease.

Study results presented at the 2015 Liver Meeting suggest that the investigational once-daily tablet elbasvir/grazoprevir can safely and effectively treat Hepatitis C virus in intravenous drug users, considered to be "difficult" cases, in part due to the risk of re-infection.

An estimated 10 million people in China have hepatitis C but the only treatment available there is interferon/ribaviron. Though the drug-approval process in China is slower than in other nations, a phase 3 trial of two Bristol-Myers Squibb direct-acting antivirals has been completed, putting access to DAAs closer.

With more treatments on the market for hepatitis C, the costs of treatment have actually gone up in recent years. However, if more patients receive the care they need those costs could eventually go down.

A regimen of grazoprevir, elbasvir, and a Merck agent known as MK-3682, or a second agent called MK-8408 (or both), showed "strong results" company researchers said in data presented at the 2015 Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA.

With an aging veteran population there are a number of conditions that need to be treated in these patients as well as others of their generation, particularly in when it comes to liver disease.

Although there are now effective treatments for several genotypes of hepatitis C, certain patient groups continue to present challenges for the pharmaceutical and medical communities. Work is being done to overcome those challenges around the world.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced changes to the Harvoni (ledipasvir/sofosbuvir) label – a hepatitis C drug that was first approved in October 2014.

A human-cell-based liver support system meant to keep patients alive despite acute liver failure did not help overall survival in a trial, but showed promise for a subset of patients. Those patients were younger and not as sick-though all subjects enrolled had alcoholic hepatitis.

Researchers who conducted the ASTRAL-1 trial of sofosbuvir/velpatasvir attending the Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA, presented results of a study on an antiviral that works on five types of hepatitis C virus. The study findings were released last month by manufacturer Gilead.

Hepatitis C genotype 3 can be hard to cure, but researchers presenting a study at the Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA, said they have found a regimen that works.

Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C in the word and most of it (90%) is genotype 4. Researchers presenting a study at the Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA, reported success in a trial of ravidasvir