Chronic Liver Diseases

The term chronic hepatitis encompasses many distinct clinical and pathologic diseases affecting the liver, the most important of which are autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), chronic hepatitis B with or without hepatitis D, and chronic hepatitis C caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV). The standard treatment of AIH is immunosuppressive therapy either with prednisolone alone or in combination with azathioprine. Although mycophenolate mofetil or cyclosporine can be used for retherapy in the case of treatment failure, controlled clinical trials are missing for these immunosuppressive drugs; thus, they are not part of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) practice guidelines for AIH. Chronic hepatitis B is a major global health care problem as 5% of the world’s population, or approximately 350 million persons, is chronically infected. Anti–hepatitis B virus (HBV) drugs can be divided into three classes: alfa interferons, nucleoside analogue (lamivudine, entecavir, telbivudine), and nucleotide analogue (adefovir dipivoxil, tenofovir dipivoxil). Interferon alfa has a number of potential side effects, and careful consideration must be given to its use. Tenofovir, which falls under the nucleotide analogue class, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2008 and has been shown in clinical trials to have more potent activity in serum-suppressing HBV DNA levels than the comparable adefovir. More prevalent than chronic hepatitis B is chronic hepatitis C due to the high chronicity rate of HCV infection (approximately 160 million people are chronically infected with HCV worldwide). Until 2011, the only treatment for chronic HCV was a combination therapy of pegylated interferon alfa and ribavirin (RBV); however, new treatments for chronic hepatitis C include the directly acting antivirals (DAAs) sofosbuvir and simeprevir, although host-targeting agents are also being developed. The side effects of pegylated interferon/RBV therapy and DAAs should be considered, of which only sofosbuvir has shown no specific side effects so far in clinical studies. This module contains 5 highly rendered figures, 6 tables, 61 references, and 5 MCQs.