Treatment Uptake of Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C: Can We Expect and Do More?

Excerpt

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection frequently causes chronic liver disease leading to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and HCV-related end-stage liver disease is the main indicator of the need for liver transplantation in Western countries and the leading cause of death amongst cirrhotic patients [1, 2]. To improve the overall outcome and prevent patients from the major long-term complications of chronic hepatitis C (CHC), we have to explore more effective antiviral therapies and more aggressive policies to encourage patients to receive therapies, since in the absence of the effective vaccine for hepatitis C in contrast to hepatitis B, the standard of care (SOC) for antiviral treatment of CHC is combination therapy with pegylated IFN alfa (PegIFN) and ribavirin. …