Less than 65% of people with hepatitis C receive treatment

Hepatitis C is a common liver disease that is easily treated with new antiviral drugs, but less than two-thirds of patients receive this medication
.

Antiviral therapy can reduce complications of hepatitis C infection, but according to two recent studies led by Dr.
Mindie Nguyen, professor of gastroenterology and hepatology, only two out of every three patients diagnosed with hepatitis C virus were treated
.

"I hope this data will give people an idea of the magnitude of the problem," said
Nguyen, senior author of the two papers.
"Our study clearly shows the benefits
.
The population we're studying may have better coverage than anyone — patients with private insurance in the U.
S.
— but less than 65 percent of people with hepatitis C receive treatment
.
This is quite sobering
.
”

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne viral infection that can progress to cirrhosis, scarring of the liver, and liver cancer
.
From 2013 to 2016, about 2.
4 million people in the United States had hepatitis
C.
Direct-acting antivirals, that is, drugs that target viral proteins, have been shown to eliminate viral infections
in about 97% of patients.

For both studies, Nguyen's team used a database of 60 million privately insured people, including more than 100,000 adults
with chronic hepatitis C.

In a study published Dec.
12 in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers found that treated patients had a much lower risk of liver-related outcomes (such as decompensation-hepatitis C progression leading to worsening liver function) and liver cancer compared to untreated patients: 64 percent and 27 percent
, respectively.
The team also found that those treated had a 26 percent lower risk of diabetes and a 10 percent
lower risk of cardiovascular disease and non-liver cancer.
Overall, the mortality rate of treated patients was about half (43%)
of that of untreated patients.

Eiichi Ogawa, MD, former visiting scholar, and research assistant, Nicholas Chien, MD, are co-lead authors
of JAMA's internal medicine paper.

Another study, published Dec.
7 in JAMA Network Open, found that between April 2018 and March 2019, the treatment rate among privately insured Americans was 65 percent
.
Vy Nguyen, research coordinator in Nguyen's lab and Harvard Medical School, is the paper's lead author
.

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