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Study could inform hepatitis C treatment and vaccine development worldwide
The largest population study of hepatitis C in Africa has found three new strains of the virus circulating in the general population in sub-Saharan Africa. The research from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research and collaborators suggested that certain antiviral drugs currently used in the West may not be as effective against the new strains and that clinical trials of patients in sub-Saharan Africa are urgently needed to assess optimal treatment strategies in this region.
Published in the Journal Hepatology, the discovery of the new strains could inform hepatitis C treatment and vaccine development worldwide, and assist the World Health Organisation’s aim of eliminating hepatitis C globally.
The researchers discovered that current screening methods using antibody detection were inaccurate in Uganda and that detection of the virus itself would likely be a superior method for diagnosing the infection in high-risk populations. The researchers found that many of the strains present carry mutations in genes known to be associated with resistance to some commonly used antiviral drugs, proving that careful approaches are needed to diagnose and treat HCV effectively in Africa.
Read more…https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181217105655.htm