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Restrictions on access to direct-acting antivirals for people who inject drugs: The European Hep-CORE study and the role of patient groups in monitoring national HCV responses

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.05.054Get rights and content

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Conflict of interest

No conflicts of interested reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by unrestricted grants from AbbVie Inc., Gilead Sciences Inc., and MSD.

Disclosures

No disclosures reported.

Role of authors

JVL was the Hep-CORE studýs principal investigator. KSH, JVL, MH and SRS drafted the article with input from the co-authors. KSH also served as the Hep-CORE study coordinator and SRS as the data manager. MH, MJR, MM, TR, ES, and JT were part of the Hep-CORE study group and contributed to the development of the original study instrument as well as providing expert input for the article. All authors reviewed and approved the final draft of the article.

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  • European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

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  • Cited by (19)

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    • “Everybody living with a chronic disease is entitled to be cured”: Challenges and opportunities in scaling up access to direct-acting antiviral hepatitis C virus treatment among people who inject drugs

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    • The removal of DAA restrictions in Europe – One step closer to eliminating HCV as a major public health threat

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      Testing, diagnosis, linkage to care and treatment uptake must be improved in Europe in order for WHO elimination targets to be achieved. A major barrier to enhancing HCV treatment uptake has been restrictions set by payers, including national governments and others, in response to the initially high list prices of DAA therapies.30–34 This resulted in the prioritisation of DAA therapy based on liver disease stage and may have influenced restrictions based on prescriber type (e.g. limited to prescribing by specialists, typically gastroenterologists, hepatologists, and infectious diseases specialists), and recent drug/alcohol use.

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