Hepatitis E virus treatment and ribavirin therapy: viral mechanisms of nonresponse

Publication date: October 2018Source: Current Opinion in Virology, Volume 32Author(s): Daniel Todt, Toni Luise Meister, Eike SteinmannHepatitis E virus (HEV) can cause chronic infections in immunosuppressed patients with adverse clinical outcomes. Intervention strategies are limited with ribavirin (RBV) being the only main therapeutic option as off-label drug. Recent reports on RBV monotherapy failures show a coherence with the presence of certain single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and in-frame insertions in the hypervariable region of open reading frame 1 in the HEV genome. Importantly, some of the alterations were present in the viral population as minor variant before RBV administration. Individualized infection medicine by early detection of emerging viral variants in patients could improve treatment outcome and prognosis.Graphical abstract

Source: Current Opinion in Virology - October 30, 2018 Category: Virology Source Type: research