Power combo: Harm reduction plus effective treatment help prevent spread of Hepatitis C

published on July 28, 2020 in Vancouver Coastal Health

Fifty-three year old Vancouver resident Sage Rinaldo lived with hepatitis C for many years before working up the courage to seek treatment. Rinaldo credits a community health nurse in the Downtown Eastside who gained her trust and helped her successfully treat her hepatitis C with a new anti-viral treatment. Now, Rinaldo is giving back by taking part in a long-term follow up study focussed on reinfection prevention. The Per-SVR study is aiming to better understand if, how and when hepatitis C reinfection may occur.

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Unlike older hepatitis C treatments, the new direct-acting anti-viral medication (DAA) is very well tolerated and cures more than 95 per cent of hepatitis C cases. Rinaldo’s infection was cleared within six weeks. While DAA cures current cases of hepatitis C, it’s not a vaccine so it doesn’t prevent future infections. That is why research scientist Dr. Kate Salters says the follow-up study is important.

“We have two primary goals in the Per-SVR study. One is to retain people in ongoing clinical follow-up so we can quickly detect if there is a reinfection and link them to care," says Salters. "The second is to better understand harm-reduction behaviours, and the social and medical support people need in order to avoid reinfection. We want to show that free DAAs make sense from a public health perspective.”

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Viral Hepatitis Research Program (VHRP)

Hepatitis

Kate Salters

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Power combo: Harm reduction plus effective treatment help prevent spread of Hepatitis C

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