"Hepatitis C Treatment Works Well for Young Kids" - Liz Highleyman
Treatment with weight-based sofosbuvir/ledipasvir (Harvoni) for 12 weeks led to a cure for most young children with chronic hepatitis C, according to a report presented at the annual Liver Meeting. Douglas Dieterich, MD, director of the Institute for Liver Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said that these results are exciting and timely. “I think it’s important that we be able to treat these kids early, because we don’t know what long-term damage HCV might do,” he said. “A second epidemic of hepatitis C is occurring in the under-30 folks, and about 63 percent in New York State are women,” Dr. Dieterich added. “A lot of those women get pregnant and have babies, and the number of infants being infected with hepatitis C is on an exponential rise,” not just in New York but across all mid-Atlantic and Appalachian states.
— Douglas Dieterich, MD, Director, Institute of Liver Medicine, Professor, Liver Disease, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai