Background: In our country, the national program for hepatitis C virus treatment with ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir and dasabuvir was approved for patients with stage four of liver fibrosis and stage three associated with specific comorbidities. Our aim was to analyze the characteristics associated with the presence of adverse events in patients receiving this antiviral regimen, with ribavirin in cirrhotic patients.
Methods: We prospectively studied a cohort of adults with hepatitis C virus infection with Child A cirrhosis, treated for 12 weeks with ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir/dasabuvir and ribavirin, which have been followed in an infectious diseases tertiary-care hospital.
Results: We included 137 adult patients diagnosed with compensated cirrhosis, hepatitis C virus genotype 1b infected, 82 (60%) previously treated. We recorded 201 adverse events in 98 (71.5%) patients, with a median number of events per patient of one. The intensity of adverse events was classified as mild, moderate and severe in 50%, 36% and 14% of cases, respectively. Forty-five (22%) episodes required medical intervention. The most frequently reported adverse events were pruritus 34(35%), asthenia 22(22%) and insomnia 15(15%). The presence of severe adverse events was associated with the presence of comorbidities (p = 0.01, OR : 9.5, 95% CI : 1.2-74.3) and with the presence of associated medication (p = 0.02, OR : 3.9, 95% CI : 1.08-14.2). At the end of current treatment, 136 (99.2%) patients had undetectable viral load.
Conclusion: We found a high number of adverse events, but most of them were mild or moderate and only one quarter of them required medical intervention. Only severe adverse events were associated with comorbidities and associated medication.
Keywords: adverse events; cirrhosis; dasabuvir; hepatitis C virus; ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir.
© Acta Gastro-Enterologica Belgica.