Acute hepatitis C: prevention and treatment

Contemporary Insights into Hepatitis C Virus: A Comprehensive Review

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) remains a significant global health challenge. Approximately 50 million people were living with chronic hepatitis C based on the World Health Organization as of 2024, contributing extensively to global morbidity and mortality. The advent and approval of several direct-acting antiviral (DAA) regimens significantly improved HCV treatment, offering potentially high rates of cure for chronic hepatitis C. However, the promising aim of eventual HCV eradication remains challenging. Key challenges include the variability in DAA access across different regions, slightly variable response rates to DAAs across diverse patient populations and HCV genotypes/subtypes, and the emergence of resistance-associated substitutions (RASs), potentially conferring resistance to DAAs. Therefore, periodic reassessment of current HCV knowledge is needed. An up-to-date review on HCV is also necessitated based on the observed shifts in HCV epidemiological trends, continuous development and approval of therapeutic strategies, and changes in public health policies. Thus, the current comprehensive review aimed to integrate the latest knowledge on the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnostic approaches, treatment options and preventive strategies for HCV, with a particular focus on the current challenges associated with RASs and ongoing efforts in vaccine development. This review sought to provide healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers with the necessary insights to address the HCV burden more effectively. We aimed to highlight the progress made in managing and preventing HCV infection and to highlight the persistent barriers challenging the prevention of HCV infection. The overarching goal was to align with global health objectives towards reducing the burden of chronic hepatitis, aiming for its eventual elimination as a public health threat by 2030.

Feasibility of Hepatitis C Elimination in China: From Epidemiology, Natural History, and Intervention Perspectives

Hepatitis C imposes a heavy burden on many countries, including China, where the number of reported cases and the incidence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) increased yearly from 2005 to 2012, with a stable trend after 2012. The geographical distribution of HCV infections varies widely in China, with the northwest and southwest regions and the Henan Province showing a high disease burden. Elderly, men, sexually active people, drug users, migrants, blood transfusion recipients, and renal dialysis patients have become the target populations for hepatitis C prevention and control. It is important to improve the diagnosis rate in high-risk groups and asymptomatic people. Identifying secondary HCV infections, especially in HCV patients co-infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a priority of hepatitis C prevention and control. Enhancing universal access to direct antiviral agents (DAAs) treatment regimens is an effective way to improve the cure rate of HCV infection. For China to contribute to the WHO 2030 global HCV elimination plan, strategic surveillance, management, and treatment program for HCV are needed.

A review on HCV inhibitors: Significance of non-structural polyproteins

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) mortality and morbidity is a world health misery with an approximate 130–150 million chronically HCV tainted and suffering individuals and it initiate critical liver malfunction like cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma or liver HCV cancer. HCV NS5B protein one of the best studied therapeutic target for the identification of new drug candidates to be added to the combination or multiple combination medication recently approved. During the past few years, NS5B has thus been an important object of attractive medicinal chemistry endeavors, which induced to the surfacing of betrothal preclinical drug molecules. In this scenario, the current review set limit to discuss research published on NS5B and few other therapeutic functional inhibitors concentrating on hit investigation, hit to lead optimization, ADME parameters evaluation, and the SAR data which was out for each compound type and similarity taken into consideration. The discussion outlined in this specific review will surly helpful and vital tool for those medicinal chemists investigators working with HCV research programs mainly pointing on NS5B and set broad spectrum identification of creative anti HCV compounds. This mini review also tells each and every individual compound ability related how much they are active against NS5B and few other targets.

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Hepatitis C infection causes severe liver cirrhosis and carcinoma.

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The new acute HCV infections are raising every year and mortality rate become serious concern.

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The plausible list of anti-HCV drugs and clinical agents were listed in this review.

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The divergent medicinal scaffolds as anti-HCV agents were presented as per their targets.

Knowledge on HBV vaccine and vaccination status among health care workers of Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Hawassa, southern Ethiopia: a cross sectional study

OBJECTIVES

The study was conducted to assess the knowledge on HBV vaccine and vaccination status among health care workers of Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital.

RESULT

From the total 258 questionnaire prepared for the study participant, data was collected from 241 participants making the response rate of 93.4%. Regarding socio-demographic characteristics of respondents 98 (40.7%), and 159 (66%) were females and Bachelor of Science graduates respectively. Only 73 (30.3%) respondents reported that they are vaccinated for hepatitis B vaccine. But only 16 (21.9%) received three doses of Hepatitis B vaccine, which was 6.6% of the total health care workers. More than half 146 (60.6%) of the respondents had good knowledge about hepatitis B virus infection and 120 (49.8%) had good knowledge about hepatitis B vaccine. Regarding knowledge about hepatitis B virus infection prevention and control methods, 131 (28.5%) of the respondents have good knowledge.

Incidence of Active HCV infection amongst Blood Donors of Mardan District, Pakistan

Hepatitis C is an ailment of liver caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. About 3% of the world population is infected by this virus. HCV infection is a leading reason for liver cirrhosis and therefore a major source of hepatocellular carcinoma. The study focused on the incidence of active HCV infection in blood donors of Mardan district of KPK, Pakistan. A total of 5318 blood donors were inspected for the presence of anti-HCV antibodies and HCV-RNA using ICT (immune-chromatographic test), ELISA and RT-PCR at Mardan Medical Complex (MMC), Mardan. Out of these, 157 (2.95%) were positive by ICT, 60 (1.12%) by ELISA and 56 (1.05%) for HCV-RNA. The frequency of active HCV infectivity amongst the blood donors from district Mardan, KPK Pakistan was 1.05 %. Application of strict measures during blood donor selection and use of proper screening assays such as ELISA in place of ICT devices can give a more accurate picture so that the incidence of this viral infection in HCV negative blood recipients can be reduced.

The Association of Hepatitis C Serological Status with Several Risk Factors in Indonesia

Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver commonly caused by viral infection such as hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E but it is also possible by other causes. Infection with hepatitis C virus is also referred to as a disguise because the early infection is often asymptomatic that often goes undetected. This study aims at determining the several associated risk factors with hepatitis C serological status. The study design is cross-sectional. The biomedical data collection was carried out in 33 provinces in Indonesia with a population in urban blocks, census in Indonesia, where the sample is all household members over the age of one year from selected households by signing the informed consent. Total block census in selected urban area is about 971-block census with a total sample of 15.536 households. The results showed that there is a correlation between hepatitis C serological status and demographic group and that the age and occupation groups showed significant P value obtained at 0.001 (OR = 3.27, CI = 1.84-5.81) and 0.209 (OR = 0.23, CI = 0.59-0.94). In conclusion, there are risk factors such as age and occupation that have a correlation of being infected with hepatitis C serological status.

Association of Hepatitis C Virus Infection and Interleukin-28B Gene Polymorphism in Chinese Children

Objective: To preliminarily explore the association of rs12979860 and rs8099917 SNPs with chronic HCV infection in Chinese Han children.

Methods: Chronic HCV infection patients (n=277; 1-17 years old, 4.5 years old in average) and healthy subjects (n=150, children; 2-17 years old, 5.2 years old in average) were recruited and tested by PCR combining direct sequencing. The differences between the rs12979860 and rs8099917 genotypes in patients and healthy subjects were compared.

Results: The genetic variations at rs12979860 and rs8099917 in chronic hepatitis C (CHC) children and healthy subjects did not differ significantly. The frequency of spontaneous clearance in CHC children was higher (47%), which is related to the genetic variations. The histological changes of patients were more significant compared to their clinical and biochemical indices, but they did not correlate with the genetic mutations at rs12979860 and rs8099917 significantly.

Conclusion: The rs12979860 and rs8099917 SNPs are independent factors predicting the spontaneous clearance of Chinese CHC children patients. The correlation between diseases outcomes are in need of further study.

Proteinticle engineering for accurate 3D diagnosis

In nature certain proteins are self-assembled inside cells to form nanoscale particles (named "proteinticles") with constant structure and surface topology. Unlike chemically synthesized nanomaterials (e.g., various metal, carbon, and polymer nanoparticles), a variety of functional proteinticles can be easily created through genetic modification of the proteinticle surface, i.e., by adding or inserting specified proteins/peptides to the N- or C-terminus or the internal region of the protein constituent. Here we present proteins/peptides that recognize disease-specific antibodies on the surface of human ferritin based proteinticles for accurate 3D diagnosis of human autoimmune and infectious diseases. The surface display of the extracellular domain of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) with native conformation successfully discriminated between autoantibodies to native or denatured MOG, leading to the reliable diagnosis of multiple sclerosis with enhanced accuracy. Also we simultaneously displayed different antigenic peptides from hepatitis C virus (HCV) on the same proteinticle surface with modulating the composition of each peptide. The proteinticles with the heterogeneous peptide surface detected anti-HCV antibodies in patient sera with 100% accuracy. The proposed method of proteinticle engineering can be applied in general to the sensitive and specific diagnosis of many other human diseases.

Prevalence of HCV risk behaviors among prison inmates: tattooing and injection drug use

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most common blood-borne chronic viral infection in the United States and it is over represented in incarcerated populations. This study estimates if in prison tattooing is associated with self reported HCV infection in a probabilistic sample of 1,331 sentenced inmates in Puerto Rico prisons anonymously surveyed in 2004, who had previously been tested for HCV. Analysis were carried out with the total sample and among non-injectors (n=796) to control for injection drug use (IDU) and other confounders. Nearly 60% of inmates had acquired tattoos in prison. HCV was reported by 27% of subjects in the total sample and by 12% of non-injectors who had undergone tattoos in prison. IDU was the strongest predictor of HCV in the total sample (OR=5.6, 95% CI=3.2-9.7). Among non injectors, tattooing with reused needles or sharp objects and/ or reusing ink was positively associated with HCV self-report (OR=2.6, 95% CI=1.3-5.5). Tattooing is a common occurrence in this prison setting. Findings suggest that preventive interventions are required to reduce the risk of HCV transmission through unsterile tattooing and injection practices.

Detection of hepatitis C virus by an improved loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay

An improved, sensitive, specific, and rapid one-step reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay targeting the 5' untranslated region (UTR) was developed to detect hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Based on an accelerating primer (AP), the present assay, named AP-LAMP, has the advantages of rapidity and sensitivity over the routine LAMP method. The possible AP-based amplification pathway during the reaction was revealed by restriction enzyme digestion and eletrophoresis. The detection limit of the AP-LAMP assay was approximately 84 IU/ml, and no cross-detection was observed. The assay was evaluated further with 126 clinical specimens, and the results indicated the suitability and simplicity of the test as a rapid diagnostic tool for detection of HCV RNA.

Early interferon-based treatment after detection of persistent hepatitis C virus infection: a critical decision

Approximately 170 million people are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) worldwide. Infection with this pathogen is persistent in more than 80% of cases, frequently developing severe forms of liver damage such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. No preventive vaccine is available against HCV, and current treatment based on the combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin is effective in ∼55% of patients infected with genotype 1, the most prevalent genotype. This review analyzes several factors influencing the achievement of a sustained virological response, namely undetectable HCV RNA at 6 months after conclusion of therapy. Particularly, the relevant issue of age and duration of infection is discussed in detail. Indeed, the final decision for starting treatment should be a case-by-case point. However, the cost-benefit analysis seems to indicate that in patients who are motivated and without contraindications, starting the treatment as early as possible is probably the best choice for success.