Re-treatment of Hepatitis C Infection After Multiple Failures of Direct-Acting Antiviral Therapy

BACKGROUND: Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies for hepatitis C virus (HCV) result in initial cure rates of 95% to 99% and re-treatment cure rates of 95%. Nevertheless, given the sheer magnitude of infected persons, some will ultimately fail multiple DAA therapies, and re-treatment of these persons has not been adequately studied. METHODS: We evaluated treated an HIV-infected man with cirrhosis from genotype 1b HCV who had failed 3 DAA regimens. RESULTS: We treated and cured our “particularly difficult-to-cure” patient with sofosbuvir plus glecaprevir/pibrentasvir plus ribavirin for 24 weeks. We discuss the literature on potential biological factors behind his treatment failures such as lack of HCV seroconversion during his infection course, and multiple failures of hepatitis B seroconversion after vaccination, and the rationale for choosing his curative salvage regimen. DISCUSSION: There are no clinical trials-proven re-treatment regimens for “particularly difficult-to-cure” patients. Multiple patient- and virus-related factors that do not affect cure rates in treatment-naive patients may need to be considered in choosing a re-treatment regimen for these patients. These regimens may need to include combinations drugs that are not available in single-tablet form, addition of ribavirin, and longer durations of treatment than standard.