New Hepatitis Treatments Highlighted At ICAAC

Chronic viral hepatitis is the most important cause of liver disease worldwide, and the two most important factors are hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses. Vaccines exist for HBV, but are probably years away for HCV, and drug treatment for both these infections remains unsatisfactory. At the 36th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, progress was reported on second-generation drug treatments for HBV and HCV.

Discussing the relative importance of the infections, Jay Hoofnagle, director of the division of digestive diseases and nutrition at the US National Institutes of Health, noted that HBV is an enormous public health problem worldwide, responsible for more than two million deaths each year via HBV-induced cirrhosis or liver cancer.

HCV, on the other hand, is more common than HBV infection in the USA (by a ratio of 3-4:1), noted Dr Hoofnagle, largely because of extensive public health, screening and vaccination programs for HBV. The US Centers for Disease Control has reported a steady decline in the incidence of HBV infection over the last few years, but at ICAAC there were reports of a renewed upturn in HBV in the 1993-1995 period in four county health departments.