|Articles|August 16, 2017

Direct-acting antivirals reduce liver cancer risk

Author(s)Mark Fuerst

A sustained response to direct-acting antivirals lowers the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, a new study finds.

There is a low risk of liver cancer after patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) achieve sustained virological response (SVR) after treatment with direct-acting antivirals (DAA), according to a new study.

New DAAs have become widely used over the last few years and have changed the way physicians treat HCV.

“Almost everyone who is infected with HCV and treated with DAAs is now cured. There has been some concern of anecdotal reports that liver cancer may be a complication of this treatment, and that there is a risk of developing liver cancer that is more aggressive than previously seen with interferon-based treatment,” Fasiha Kanwal, MD, professor of medicine and interim chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, told Medical Economics.

Kanwal and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study of 22,500 HCV patients who were treated with DAAs in 129 Veterans Health Administration hospitals during 2015. They calculated the annual incidence rates for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by SVR.

The researchers published their results on June 19, 2017, in Gastroenterology.

 

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