Risk Of Developing Liver Cancer After HCV Treatment

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Treatment and primary prevention in people who inject drugs for chronic hepatitis C infection: Is elimination possible in a high prevalence setting?

Research Report

Treatment and primary prevention in people who inject drugs for chronic hepatitis C infection: Is elimination possible in a high prevalence setting?
Gountas I, et al.
Addiction. 2017

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/add.13764

Download Accepted Article; Treatment and primary prevention in people who inject drugs for chronic hepatitis C infection: Is elimination possible in a high prevalence setting?

Abstract
AIMS: To project the impact of scaling up oral antiviral therapy and harm reduction on chronic hepatitis C (CHC) prevalence and incidence among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Greece, to estimate the relationship between required treatment levels and expansion of harm reduction programs to achieve specific targets and to examine whether hepatitis C viruse (HCV) elimination among PWID is possible in this high prevalence setting.

DESIGN: A dynamic discrete time, stochastic individual-based model was developed to simulate HCV transmission among PWID incorporating the effect of HCV treatment and harm reduction strategies, and allowing for reinfection following treatment.

SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: The population of 8,300 PWID in Athens Metropolitan area

MEASUREMENTS: Reduction in HCV prevalence and incidence in 2030 compared with 2016.

FINDINGS: Moderate expansion of HCV treatment (treating 4%-8% of PWID/year), with simultaneous increase of 2%/year in harm reduction coverage (from 44% to 72% coverage over 15 years), was projected to reduce CHC prevalence among PWID in Athens by 46%-90% in 2030, compared with 2016. CHC prevalence would reduce below 10% within the next 4-5 years if annual HCV treatment numbers were increased up to 16%-20% PWID/year. The effect of harm reduction on incidence was more pronounced under lower treatment rates.

CONCLUSIONS: Based on theoretical model projections, scaled-up hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment and harm reduction interventions could achieve major reductions in HCV incidence and prevalence among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Athens, Greece by 2030. Chronic hepatitis C could be eliminated in the next 4-5 years by increasing treatment to more than 16% of PWID per year combined with moderate increases in harm reduction coverage.

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Addiction 2017
© Society for the Study of Addiction
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I highly suggest you follow Henry E. Chang on Twitter if you are interested in reading full text articles about the treatment and management of hepatitis C, the above PDF link was tweeted today by Henry E. Chang

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