Impact of direct-acting antiviral treatment of hepatitis C on the quality of life of adults in Ukraine

BACKGROUND: Direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) are highly effective in achieving sustained virologic response among those with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Quality of life (QOL) benefits for an HCV-infected population with high numbers of people who inject drugs and people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Eastern Europe have not been explored. We estimated such benefits for Ukraine. METHODS: Using data from a demonstration study of 12-week DAA conducted in Kyiv, we compared self-reported QOL as captured with the MOS-SF20 at study entry and 12 weeks after treatment completion (week 24). We calculated domain scores for health perception, physical, role and social functioning, mental health and pain to at entry and week 24, stratified by HIV status. RESULTS: Among the 857 patients included in the final analysis, health perception was the domain that showed the largest change, with an improvement of 85.7% between entry and week 24. The improvement was larger among those who were HIV negative (104.4%) than among those living with HIV (69.9%). Other domains that showed significant and meaningful improvements were physical functioning, which improved from 80.5 (95% CI 78.9–82.1) at study entry to 89.4 (88.1–90.7) at 24 weeks, role functioning (64.5 [62.3–66.8] to 86.5 [84.9–88.2]), social functioning (74.2 [72.1–76.2] to 84.8 [83.2–86.5]) and bodily pain (70.1 [68.2–72.0] to 89.8 [88.5–91.1]). Across all domains, QOL improvements among PLHIV were more modest than among HIV-negative participants. CONCLUSION: QOL improved substantially across all domains between study entry and week 24. Changes over the study period were smaller among PLHIV. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07615-9.