Acute hepatitis C infection: New approaches to surveillance, treatment and prevention

Abstract

In high-income countries, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is predominantly acquired through injecting drug use. Acute HCV, generally considered to be the first 6 months of HCV infection, remains underdiagnosed since new infections are most often asymptomatic and there are practical problems in surveillance and testing individuals at high-risk of infection. While the chronic HCV treatment landscape is changing rapidly with the advent of direct acting anti-viral agents, treatment recommendations for acute HCV infection are based on smaller, largely observational studies and all regimens still include pegylatedinterferon. This review considers surveillance and diagnostic strategies as individ..