ArticleBMC medicine2024
Loss to follow-up of patients after antiviral treatment as an additional barrier to HCV elimination.
Article in BMC medicine, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Clinical outcomes and patient-reported measures in HCV care: Insight from a longitudinal prospective study in a large Italian region.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- Assessing hepatitis C self-testing within differentiated care models in Cameroon: Feasibility, acceptability, and linkage to care for key and priority populations.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Correction: Loss to follow-up of patients after antiviral treatment as an additional barrier to HCV elimination.BMC medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEliminating hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections is a goal set by the World Health Organization. This has become possible with the introduction of highly effective and safe direct-acting antivirals (DAA) but limitations remain due to undiagnosed HCV infections and loss of patients from the cascade of care at various stages, including those lost to follow-up (LTFU) before the assessment of the effectiveness of the therapy. The aim of our study was to determine the extent of this loss and to establish the characteristics of patients experiencing it.
methodsPatients with chronic HCV infection from the Polish retrospective multicenter EpiTer-2 database who were treated with DAA therapies between 2015 and 2023 were included in the study.
resultsIn the study population of 18,968 patients, 106 had died by the end of the 12-week post-treatment follow-up period, and 509 patients did not report for evaluation of therapy effectiveness while alive and were considered LTFU. Among patients with available assessment of sustained virological response (SVR), the effectiveness of therapy was 97.5%. A significantly higher percentage of men (p<0.0001) and a lower median age (p=0.0001) were documented in LTFU compared to the group with available SVR assessment. In LTFU patients, comorbidities such as alcohol (p<0.0001) and drug addiction (p=0.0005), depression (p=0.0449) or other mental disorders (p<0.0001), and co-infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (p<0.0001) were significantly more common as compared to those with SVR assessment. They were also significantly more often infected with genotype (GT) 3, less likely to be treatment-experienced and more likely to discontinue DAA therapy.
conclusionsIn a real-world population of nearly 19,000 HCV-infected patients, we documented a 2.7% loss to follow-up rate. Independent predictors of this phenomenon were male gender, GT3 infection, HIV co-infection, alcohol addiction, mental illnesses, lack of prior antiviral treatment and discontinuation of DAA therapy.
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