Cargando…

Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global public health concern with significant impacts. It primarily spreads through blood-to-blood contact, such as sharing needles among drug users. Given the wide prevalence of risk factors, HCV continues to pose a major threat. Hence, it is crucial to understand its c...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Bernal, Luis A, Soti, Varun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10443603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37614826
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.43924
_version_ 1785093866963075072
author Bernal, Luis A
Soti, Varun
author_facet Bernal, Luis A
Soti, Varun
author_sort Bernal, Luis A
collection PubMed
description Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global public health concern with significant impacts. It primarily spreads through blood-to-blood contact, such as sharing needles among drug users. Given the wide prevalence of risk factors, HCV continues to pose a major threat. Hence, it is crucial to understand its characteristics, structure, and genotypes to prevent, treat, and potentially eradicate it. This narrative review aims to explore the history of HCV treatment, highlight the breakthroughs achieved with direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy, address potential barriers to HCV eradication, and discuss future treatment possibilities. For this article, relevant studies were identified using various databases, including PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Journal Storage. The literature search revealed that after identifying HCV and studying its characteristics, interferon alfa and ribavirin became primary treatment options. However, due to their limited coverage against different HCV genotypes, ethnic variations, and suboptimal sustained virological response, the development of DAAs became essential. Combining various DAAs, such as sofosbuvir and velpatasvir, for a duration of 12 weeks has become the standard HCV treatment, with effectiveness against most genotypes. Additionally, ongoing clinical trials have shown promising results for other drugs such as CDI31244/sofosbuvir/velpatasvir, sofosbuvir/coblopasvir, and daclatasvir/asunaprevir. Despite the success of DAAs and ongoing efforts to discover more effective treatments, the high costs of DAAs pose a significant challenge to eradicating HCV, as not all patients can afford these expensive therapies. Furthermore, the ability of HCV to mutate limits the potential for vaccine development. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on developing more cost-effective strategies to control the spread of HCV and create novel, highly effective, and affordable DAAs.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-10443603
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2023
publisher Cureus
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-104436032023-08-23 Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions Bernal, Luis A Soti, Varun Cureus Internal Medicine Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global public health concern with significant impacts. It primarily spreads through blood-to-blood contact, such as sharing needles among drug users. Given the wide prevalence of risk factors, HCV continues to pose a major threat. Hence, it is crucial to understand its characteristics, structure, and genotypes to prevent, treat, and potentially eradicate it. This narrative review aims to explore the history of HCV treatment, highlight the breakthroughs achieved with direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy, address potential barriers to HCV eradication, and discuss future treatment possibilities. For this article, relevant studies were identified using various databases, including PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Journal Storage. The literature search revealed that after identifying HCV and studying its characteristics, interferon alfa and ribavirin became primary treatment options. However, due to their limited coverage against different HCV genotypes, ethnic variations, and suboptimal sustained virological response, the development of DAAs became essential. Combining various DAAs, such as sofosbuvir and velpatasvir, for a duration of 12 weeks has become the standard HCV treatment, with effectiveness against most genotypes. Additionally, ongoing clinical trials have shown promising results for other drugs such as CDI31244/sofosbuvir/velpatasvir, sofosbuvir/coblopasvir, and daclatasvir/asunaprevir. Despite the success of DAAs and ongoing efforts to discover more effective treatments, the high costs of DAAs pose a significant challenge to eradicating HCV, as not all patients can afford these expensive therapies. Furthermore, the ability of HCV to mutate limits the potential for vaccine development. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on developing more cost-effective strategies to control the spread of HCV and create novel, highly effective, and affordable DAAs. Cureus 2023-08-22 /pmc/articles/PMC10443603/ /pubmed/37614826 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.43924 Text en Copyright © 2023, Bernal et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Internal Medicine
Bernal, Luis A
Soti, Varun
Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions
title Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions
title_full Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions
title_fullStr Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions
title_full_unstemmed Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions
title_short Hepatitis C Virus: Insights Into Its History, Treatment, Challenges, and Future Directions
title_sort hepatitis c virus: insights into its history, treatment, challenges, and future directions
topic Internal Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10443603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37614826
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.43924
work_keys_str_mv AT bernalluisa hepatitiscvirusinsightsintoitshistorytreatmentchallengesandfuturedirections
AT sotivarun hepatitiscvirusinsightsintoitshistorytreatmentchallengesandfuturedirections