A new study from the UT Southwestern Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center has demonstrated that antiviral drugs for hepatitis C reduce liver-related deaths by nearly 50% in patients with a history of liver cancer.

The study was published in the journal Gastroenterology.

The physicians were reluctant to prescribe direct-acting antivirals to treat hepatitis C in patients with a history of liver cancer.

Researchers studied nearly 800 patients from 31 medical centers across the country and found that the drugs are not only safe, they decrease death from cirrhosis and liver cancer by 46%.

Defeating hepatitis C is an important step because infection can otherwise lead to cirrhosis which can be deadly.
Cirrhosis can increase the risk for liver cancer, which also may be fatal.
Curing hepatitis C with antivirals breaks the first link in a deadly chain of events and can lead to improvement in liver function among those who have previously developed cirrhosis.

Hepatitis C rapidly made its way into the blood stream in the 1970s and 1980s when intravenous drug use spiked and blood products were not screened for the hepatitis C virus.
Hepatitis C infected 2 to 3% of the baby boomer population in the United States.

The disease can lie dormant for 25 to 30 years and resurface as a life-threatening specter years after someone has stopped using drugs and turned to a healthy lifestyle.
Hepatologists saw an alarming spike in cirrhosis as baby boomers aged. By 2017, The New York Times called hepatitis C an enormous public health problem.
In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) announced there were nearly 2.4 million people living with hepatitis C in the U.S. ( Xagena )

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center ( UTSW ), 2019

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