Adherence to HCV Therapy Is Associated with Virologic Response

As treatments for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection have become more complex — now including triple-therapy regimens — patient adherence has become more challenging. Most investigations of the association between exposure to combination regimens and virologic response rates have examined the effect of provider-directed dose reductions, not patient adherence.

To investigate whether adherence to HCV therapy was associated with early virologic response (EVR; ≥2 log₁₀ HCV RNA drop at 12 weeks) or sustained virologic response (SVR; undetectable HCV RNA after 24 weeks), researchers retrospectively examined data from the National Veterans Affairs Hepatitis C Clinical Case Registry on 5706 patients who received peginterferon and ribavirin for HCV in…