Trial of new hepatitis care model aims to raise cure rates

Dr Joseph Doyle

by Anne Crawford

130,000 people live with untreated hepatitis C (HCV) in Australia. Direct-acting antiviral treatment marked a new era in HCV treatment and has the potential to eliminate the disease as a public health threat. But although curative treatment, which targets specific steps within the hepatitis life-cycle, has been available as a PBS-funded therapy in Australia for nearly three years, the number of people commencing it is falling.

In particular, people who inject drugs (PWID), who have the highest burden of hepatitis, can be difficult to engage in traditional models of care. It currently takes several visits to doctors to test, confirm, and start people on curative HCV treatment.

Dr Joseph Doyle from the Department of Infectious Diseases has received a $1.459 million Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council to conduct a paradigm-changing trial assessing the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a same-visit HCV testing and treatment model of care for PWID.

$11 million grant for eliminating Hepatitis C



Professor Margaret Hellard is
Deputy Director of the Burnet Institute

The Paul Ramsay Foundation has made an $11.33 million grant to the Eliminate Hepatitis C Australia (EC Australia) project' which aims to eradicate the virus as a health threat in Australia by 2030. The project is being administered through the Burnet Institute, and several researchers adjunct with the two large Monash schools, Central Clinical and Public Health and Preventive Medicine, at the Alfred Health precinct are involved.

Common infections may increase cardiovascular risk in HIV patients

L-R: Dr James McMahon, Dr Janine Trevillyan, Prof Jenny Hoy
and Dr Norm Roth (GP at Prahran Market Clinic) conferring. Jenny
and Janine are co-authors together with Victoria Berquist, a former
CCS BMedSc(Hons) student, on the paper on CV risk in HIV patients

by Anne Crawford

When human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) erupted more than 30 years ago, the lifespan of people with fully-blown AIDS was short. Management of the disease often meant palliative care.

Now, with effective drugs, the longevity of a person living with AIDS in Australia is approaching that of the general population. But there’s still a gap of some eight to 10 years lost over a lifetime, mostly due to heart attack and cancers. Monash University researchers at the Alfred Hospital are investigating the factors behind increased cardiovascular risk in HIV-positive individuals and what can be done to about them. 

Clinical presentation of risk factors of hepatitis C virus among HIV-infected patients in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau

CCS researchers have written an article which looks at the clinical presentation of risk factors of hepatitis C virus among HIV-infected patients in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau.