*American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases

Obese people are generally less healthy than those of normal weight, but that should not be a barrier to liver transplantation, researchers said at the 2015 Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA.

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.

Donor livers are scarce, donated organs are precious, and transplant surgeons make the final call on whether to transplant. When the question of whether to give a liver to a patient who uses marijuana, drinks too much alcohol, or even smokes tobacco comes up, the issue gets tricky.

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.

Researchers see promise in vitamin E treatment for NASH.

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.

Georgraphy matters in getting a liver transplant. Boston researchers found that living a long distance from a transplant center increased a child's risk of dying while on an organ waiting list, even though that distance did not mean a longer waiting time.

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.

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.

Whether accidental or on purpose, acetaminophen overdose is a common finding in liver poisoning. Researchers at the 2015 Liver Meeting said they have zeroed in on the mechanism at work.

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.

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

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.

Drawing upon data from a large European study, Andrés Cárdenas, MD, reported an association between hyponatremia and acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) during a poster session at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases held November 1-5, 2013, in Washington, DC.

Investigating the association between hyponatremia and cognition in patients with cirrhosis, Jasmohan Bajaj, MD, and colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University presented results showing reduced brain edema, better quality of life (QOL), and less caregiver burden with the use of the aquaretic tolvaptan.

A novel direct-acting antiviral (DAA) targeting a protein associated with hepatitis C (HCV) also has antiviral activity against HIV-1 and shows benefit in co-infected individuals when added to pegylated interferon and ribavirin treatment (PR).

Emerging data from a clinical trial on triple direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy plus ribavirin (RBV) in hepatitis C (HCV) genotype 1 (GT1) patients shows that the low rate of relapse during and after treatment leads to high concordance rates between measurements of sustained viral response (SVR) at 4, 12, and 24 weeks post-treatment.

Sustained viral response (SVR) without resistance or safety issues was reported among chronic hepatitis B (HBV) patients taking tenofovir disopoxil fumarate (TDF) therapy over a 7-year period.

High medication adherence and sustained viral response (SVR) has been reported in hepatitis C (HCV) patients taking an interferon-free, short-duration, oral regimen of ribavirin (RBV) combined with 3 direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) that are currently in phase 2b/3 clinical trials.