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The high efficacy of direct-acting antivirals correlated with significant improvement in survival of patients who underwent liver transplantation for hepatitis C-related liver disease, according to a recently published study.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the main cause of end-stage liver disease leading to liver transplantation (LT) in the Western world, and until the widespread use of the direct-acting antiviral regimens (DAA) it had a significant detrimental impact on posttransplant patient and graft survival.
“Although a direct effect of DAA therapy is difficult to demonstrate, we clearly show that survival improved only in LT recipients with HCV infection after the introduction of DAA therapies, and the time period was independently associated with survival in anti-HCV positive patients,” the researchers wrote. “Importantly, this was not the case in the remaining indications of LT.”