A new study on a clinical program that gives postpartum mothers the opportunity to start antiviral treatment for hepatitis C while still in the hospital after giving birth showed an increase in their odds of completing therapy and being cured.
Hepatitis C can “cause cirrhosis, liver cancer, liver failure, and death if left untreated. Despite the availability of highly effective treatments, the prevalence of hepatitis C infection remains high, particularly among women of childbearing age, who account for more than one-fifth of chronic hepatitis C infections globally. Within this group, new mothers are especially vulnerable because treatment has traditionally required outpatient follow-up appointments during the challenging postpartum period.”
A so-called “Meds to Beds” approach was developed by the researchers behind this study. Rather than referring patients to outpatient follow-up care, “the obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine care team would begin the process required for an infectious disease specialist to initiate treatment before the patient was discharged.” Two-thirds of the patients in the study who began treatment in the hospital “successfully completed the full course of treatment — 2-3 months of antiviral medication — compared with about one-third of the outpatient referral group. The researchers found that over half of postpartum mothers in the outpatient referral group did not attend the follow-up appointment.”
Doctors at WashU Medicine are now being trained to deploy the program to all patients with untreated hepatitis C. The program “has delivered medications to bedside for more than 200 patients, representing an important advance in hepatitis C care.”
