EASL

Is a methacetin breath test superior to MELD scores in predicting mortality in liver failure?

Being overweight in itself is a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), but people of normal body mass index (BMI) can have lean NAFLD and if so they are in even greater danger.

Severe neurological symptoms, not liver failure, should be the signal to start thinking about a liver transplant in Wilson Disease, French researchers say.

An Australian physician is sending generic DAAs made in China and India to patients with hepatitis in the US. It's part of an NIH-approved clinical trial.

Liver transplant does not always mean the end of a hepatitis infection. A California team has had success treating recurrent HCV with DAAs.

Public health concerns in Europe mount as data show Syrian refugees have higher rates of HBV than residents in host countries.

Delivering on predictions made at major liver disease meetings over the past year, researchers said two experimental panvirals are curing hepatitis patients who had not been helped by earlier direct-acting antivirals.

In what researchers said was the first study of DAAs in children with HCV, UK researchers reported the drugs were effective and well tolerated. Questions remain about whther they might have any negative effects farther out.

A team from Germany found patients with acute HCV infection could be cured in six weeks with DAA treatment, half the recommended time.

The best treatment so far for primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare and devastating inflammatory disease that typically strikes people in late adolescence or early adulthood, is liver transplant. But a phase 2 trial of norursodeoxycholic acid showed efficacy.

Nurse practitioners with three hours training were better than specialists or primary care providers at getting HCV patients to complete their DAA regimens, Washington, DC area researchers found.

Direct-acting antivirals can cure hepatitis C. But in patients who had also had liver cancer, the drugs appear to result in an alarmingly high rate of cancer recurrence.

A very preliminary report on a drug that could block the hepatitis B and hepatitis D viruses showed it does not have any negative interaction with tenofovir, a potential hurdle for treatment.

There are few effective treatments for hepatitis B virus infection, but a Korean team says it believes it has found one.

A recent study in the United Kingdom looked at the 6-month outcomes of those with hepatitis C cirrhosis on antiviral treatment.

Investigational RG-101 could shorten HCV treatment with direct-acting antivirals to four weeks, researchers report in a phase 2 study.

Work being done to treat and cure hepatitis C today could make it almost a non-issue for future generations, thanks to groups like the World Health Organization (WHO) and others putting the focus on parts of the world that need help in this area the most.

As hepatitis C becomes a largely curable condition, work is being done to ensure that people around the world get the same level of treatment no matter where they live. That effort is being supported thanks to new guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Researchers in the UK analyzed the genomes of heavy drinkers and found that those who had liver disease had variants in two genes, a condition not shared by heavy drinkers who did not get liver disease.

Reporting on a hepatitis B drug trial, researchers said a new drug offers better safety with equivalent efficacy to the drug it could replace.

A combination of sofosbuvir, velpatasvir, and GS-9857 has been shown safe and effective in treating hepatitis C genotype 1 infection, researchers from the Texas Liver Institute reported.

Impoved techniques and medical treatment are keeping children alive an average of at least 20 years after their surgery, a study from France reported.

With the advent of direct acting antivirals for hepatitis C, having the virus is no barrier to becoming a liver donor. A study showed that because of the drugs, HCV positive patients who get HCV positive livers do just fine.

Men who are HIV positive and who have sex with other men (MSM) are experiencing an epidemic of sexually transmitted hepatitis C virus (HCV).

Swedish researchers followed patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease for up to 41 years to come up with a scoring system to predict mortality risk.

A new direct acting antiviral combo for hepatitis c infection is more effective than sofosbuvir and peg-interferon plus ribavirin.

Direct acting antivirals have been miracle drugs for many, but a Spanish study found they can make things worse in patients with advanced liver disease.

Cirrhosis is not a new condition in the medical community, but researchers are looking at regions where the condition may be more common and how changes in policy regarding alcohol could help prevent more cases of the condition in the future.

While many forms of hepatitis C are now nearing curability, there are some genotypes which are harder to treat and some patient populations proving harder to reach. Research is being done on several fronts to address both issues.

Patients with fatty liver disease are at higher risk of dying if they have a high aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio index (APRI), federal researchers in the US report.