This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825673.
Prioritisation of treatment with direct acting oral anti-HCV drugs (DAA’s) in hepatitis C patients
Leading partner: REGION HOVEDSTADEN/CHIP (Denmark)
Hepatitis C (HCV), in combination with excessive alcohol consumption, is a major cause of excess morbidity and mortality, especially in the Eastern region of Europe. With the availability of direct acting oral anti-HCV drugs (DAA) and rapidly dropping prices per patient, eradication of HCV appears possible. However, due to lack of access, insufficient medical services and lack of diagnosis, it is not feasible to provide treatment for all infected at the same time, therefore it compelling to identify prioritisation criteria for treatment initiation, especially for the public health and medical communities in Russia and other Eastern European countries, where the HCV-infected population is around 14 million people.
By preliminary comparing the Georgia HCV eradication programme with Western European programmes, CARE proposes to derive a strategy for direct acting antivirals DAA treatment implementation in Russia and other Eastern European countries.
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Ongoing results
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The consortium has built successfully on existing cohorts of HCV-infected individuals and merged data from patients in Georgia, Sweden, Italy and the EuroSIDA study, into a new multicenter HCV datalake for retrospective studies. The datalake merged data on around 90,000 DAA treated HCV patients in Georgia, Sweden, Italy and the EuroSIDA study.
In addition to the collected retrospective data, a new multicenter prospective cohort of HIV/HCV coinfected persons from Russia and Ukraine was established by the consortium. The cohort aims to enrol 4000 patients in both countries. At present a total of 3342 unselected HIV/HCV coinfected persons have been enrolled in Russia (n=1073) and Ukraine (n=2269) and the cohort characteristics have been described (70% male, median age of 40 years, 34.3% ever tested for HCV RNA and 7.9% ever treated against HCV).