chronic-diseases-2017-posters-accepted-abstracts

Volume 2, Issue 2 (Suppl)

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases

ISSN: 2572-5548

Page 58

conferenceseries

.com

CO-ORGANIZED EVENT

August 31-September 01, 2017 Brussels, Belgium

International Conference on

Chronic Diseases

International Conference on

Microbial Physiology and Genomics

Psychiatric and substance use disorders co-morbidities and hepatitis C: Diagnostic and treatment

implications

Peter Hauser

and

Shira Kern

University of California San Diego, USA

hronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) viral infection is the most common blood-borne viral infection and approximately 2%-3%

of the world’s population or 170-200 million people are infected. In the United States as many as 3-5 million people may

have HCV. Psychiatric and substance use disorders (SUDs) are common co-morbid conditions found in people with HCV and

are factors in predisposing people to HCV infection. Also, these co-morbidities are reasons that clinicians exclude people from

antiviral therapy in spite of evidence that people with HCV and co-morbid psychiatric and SUD can be safely and effectively

treated. Furthermore, the neuropsychiatric side effects of interferon (IFN), until recently the mainstay of antiviral therapy,

have necessitated an appreciation and assessment of psychiatric co-morbidities present in people with HCV. The availability of

new medications and IFN free antiviral therapy medication combinations will shorten the duration of treatment and exposure

to IFN and thus, decrease the risk of neuropsychiatric side effects. This will have the consequence of dramatically altering the

clinical landscape of HCV care and will increase the number of eligible treatment candidates as treatment of people with HCV

and co-morbid psychiatric and SUDs will become increasingly viable. While economically developed countries will rely on

expensive IFN-free antiviral therapy, less developed countries will likely continue to use IFN-based therapies at least until such

time as IFN free antiviral medications become generic. The current manuscript discusses the efficacy and viability of treating

HCV in people with psychiatric and SUDs comorbidities, the treatment of the neuropsychiatric side effects of IFN-based

therapies and the impact of new medications and new treatment options for HCV that offer the promise of increasing the

availability of antiviral therapy in this vulnerable population.

Chron Obstruct Pulmon Dis 2017, 2:2

DOI: 10.21767/2572-5548-C1-003