Chronic liver disease-associated severe thrombocytopenia in Spain: Results from a retrospective study using machine learning and natural language processing.

Background: Patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) often develop thrombocytopenia (TCP) as a complication. Severe TCP (platelet count<50×10/L) can increase morbidity and complicate CLD management, increasing bleeding risk during invasive procedures.

Objectives: To describe the real-world scenario of CLD-associated severe TCP patients' clinical characteristics.

Significant Improvement in Diagnosis of Hepatitis C Virus Infection by a One-Step Strategy in a Central Laboratory: an Optimal Tool for Hepatitis C Elimination?

The remarkable effectivity of current antiviral therapies has led to consider the elimination of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. However, HCV infection is highly underdiagnosed; therefore, a global strategy for eliminating it requires improving the effectiveness of HCV diagnosis to identify hidden cases. In this study, we assessed the effectiveness of a protocol for HCV diagnosis based on viral load reflex testing of anti-HCV antibody-positive patients (known as one-step diagnosis) by analyzing all diagnostic tests performed by a central laboratory covering an area of 1.

Sofosbuvir and daclatasvir in mono- and HIV-coinfected patients with recurrent hepatitis C after liver transplant.

Unlabelled:  Background and aims. Pegylated interferon (Peg-INF) and ribavirin (RBV) based therapy is suboptimal and poorly tolerated. We evaluated the safety, tolerability and efficacy of a 24-week course of sofosbuvir plus daclatasvir without ribavirin for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) recurrence after liver transplantation (LT) in both HCV-monoinfected and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-HCV coinfected patients.

[Hepatic encephalopathy].

Hepatic encephalopathy (EH) is a severe complication of hepatic cirrhosis that is characterized by multiple neuropsychiatric manifestations. EH is usually triggered by a precipitating factor and occurs in patients with severely impaired hepatic function. Minimal EH is characterized by minor cognitive impairments that are difficult to specify but represent a risk for the patients.

Cost-effectiveness of boceprevir in patients previously treated for chronic hepatitis C genotype 1 infection in the United States.

Objectives: The phase 3 trial, Serine Protease Inhibitor Boceprevir and PegIntron/Rebetol-2 (RESPOND-2), demonstrated that the addition of boceprevir (BOC) to peginterferon-ribavirin (PR) resulted in significantly higher rates of sustained virologic response (SVR) in previously treated patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype-1 infection as compared with PR alone. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of treatment with BOC in previously treated patients with chronic hepatitis C in the United States using treatment-related data from RESPOND-2 and PROVIDE studies.

Methods: We developed a Markov cohort model to project the burden of HCV disease, lifetime costs, and quality-adjusted life-years associated with PR and two BOC-based therapies-response-guided therapy (BOC/RGT) and fixed-duration therapy for 48 weeks (BOC/PR48).

Report of an international workshop: Roadmap for management of patients receiving oral therapy for chronic hepatitis B.

An international group of experienced hepatologists and virologists conducted a single-day workshop to review the management of patients with chronic hepatitis B receiving treatment with oral nucleosides or nucleotides. Guidelines regarding on-treatment management and available published data on the importance of serum hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA as a marker of outcomes were reviewed. On-treatment monitoring strategies to define early virologic responses that might be predictive of better outcomes and a reduced risk of viral resistance were proposed for further study.

Hepatic HCV RNA before and after treatment with interferon alone or combined with ribavirin.

The clinical use of measuring hepatic hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA before and after therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C has been assessed in a number of small clinical trials. Viral clearance from the liver may be a better marker of long-term response than eradication of serum HCV RNA. The aim of this study was to evaluate quantitative hepatic HCV-RNA measurements before and after antiviral therapy.