HealthDay News — According to a study published in Hepatology, HCV treatment is effective with standardized nurse/pharmacist support for patients in an urban clinic with hepatitis C virus (HCV) with HIV coinfection.
Oluwaseun Falade-Nwulia, MBBS, MPH, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues examined HCV treatment outcomes among 255 HCV coinfected patients (88% black).
They initiated direct-acting antivirals between February 2014 and March 2016 in an urban clinic.
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Patients received standardized HIV nurse/pharmacist support, which included telephone calls and nurse visits. The researchers found that 60% of participants had significant fibrosis and 30% had received treatment for HCV. Ninety-one percent of patients received ledipasvir/sofosbuvir with or without ribavirin and received 12 weeks of treatment.
The sustained virologic response rate was 97%, with no variation by race (black and non-black, 96 and 97%, respectively), history of drug use, alcohol use, or psychiatric diagnosis.
“HCV treatment was highly effective among HIV-infected patients who received care within an integrated nurse/pharmacist adherence support program,” the authors write. “These results suggest that race and psychosocial comorbidity may not be barriers to HCV elimination.”
Reference
Falade-Nwulia O, et al. “High Hepatitis C Cure Rates Among Black And Non-Black HIV-Infected Adults In An Urban Center.” Hepatology. 2017. doi: 10.1002/hep.29308 [Epub ahead of print]
