Hepatitis C

The high costs of direct-acting antivirals to treat hepatitis C infection is no secret, but neither is the fact that the drugs are cost-effective. Pennsylvania researchers found insurers were lagging in approving payment for the drugs in their four-state region, with Medicaid programs the worst offenders.

Despite the success of direct antivirals in curing hepatitis C, there are concerns about resistance to the drugs.

Liver transplant specialists looked at whether post-transplant hepatitis C patients could safely eliminate ribavirin (RBV) from their drug regimens. They found they could.

Ever since direct acting antivirals for hepatitis C came on the scene, physicians have been watching to see if the need for liver transplants will diminish. It appears they have.

Most patients with non-cirrhotic livers and HCV infection may need only three weeks of direct-acting antivirals, researchers said. They reported on a small proof-of-concept study in China.

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

Patients with hepatitis C being treated with sofosbuvir-based regimens might benefit from monitoring for severe bradyarrhythmia.

Results from a small study conducted in China suggest that a novel combination treatment could cut by 75% the treatment time of current HCV medications, which themselves cut in half the time for successful treatment only a decade ago.

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.

Study results show that the interferon-free regimen of simeprevir plus sofosbuvir achieves high rates of sustained virologic response and has a strong safety profile for patients with hepatitis C.

Researchers say that identifying HCV transmission hotspots and gaining a more comprehensive understanding of exactly how hepatitis C virus is transmitted during times of significant spread could facilitate public health initiatives to reduce the prevalence of HCV in people who contract it through intravenous drug use.

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.

AbbVie's hepatitis C antivirals now come with a warning. In a Q&A with MD Magazine, Barry Bernstein, MD, the company's vice president for infectious disease product development, discusses the ramifications. It's not just AbbVie, he says, more post-market reports on other companies drugs are likely coming.

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.

For patients with underlying advanced liver disease, the hepatitis C infection treatments Viekira Pak (AbbVie) and Technivie (AbbVie) may increase the risk for serious liver injury, according to the FDA.

There are now medications on the market which can help patients with hepatitis C treat their condition successfully. One of the biggest obstacles in the field now is getting those medications to the people who need them most.

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.

More than three-quarters of intravenous drug users and Baby Boomers tested for hepatitis C were positive and unaware they were infected, according to results of a study published in the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Positive hepatitis C infection may increase risk for liver damage as well as future heart problems, according to findings published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Percutaneous liver biopsy is a proven way to rate the fibrosis stage both in hepatitis in chronic hepatitis C patients and hepatitis B patients. But it is uncomfortable for patients, risks complications and is prone to assembling errors. Reporting at ID Week 2015 in San Diego, CA, Tuma Demirdal, DR, and colleagues at the Katip Celebi University in Izmir, Turkey compared these invasive tests with non-invasive methods.

Study results show there are minimal drug-drug interactions between tenofovir alafenamide-based antiretroviral regimens for HIV and ledipasvir/sofosbuvir combination treatment for hepatitis C.

Young suburban heroin users who were admitted recently to a Princeton, NJ drug rehab facility showed an unexpectedly high incidence of hepatitis C infection.

Comparing current treatment models to lessons learned in the early days of the AIDs epidemic, University of Southern California researchers are advocating that more than just the sickest patients with hepatitis C be treated with new drugs that have much higher cure rates than past regimens.

Japanese regulators have approved AbbVie's Viekirax to treat patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C, including those with compensated cirrhosis, the most common type of hepatitis in that country.

Gilead continues a string of recent successes with stellar data from four late-stage studies showing that a combination featuring its blockbuster polymerase inhibitor sofosbuvir (Sovaldi®) and the experimental NS5A inhibitor velpatasvir is effective across all hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotypes.

A common liver health measurement could be a strong indicator of risk of hepatosteatosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, a Taiwanese study in BMJ Open suggests.

Researchers report high reinfection rates and attributable risk analysis suggest the existence of a subset of HIV-positive men who have sex with men with recurring sexual exposure to hepatitis C virus, which is troubling because HCV infections are more likely to become persistent and to lead to progressive liver disease in patients with HIV, including those on antiretroviral therapy.

Fixed-dose combination of velpatasvir and sofosbuvir produced high rates of 12-week sustained virologic response in patients with HCV genotypes 1 through 6.

Expensive and worth it. That's the verdict from Medicaid programs across the US when it comes to the new hepatitis C antivirals. State spending figures are available in a study published as a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.