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Calendar
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18-22 April 2012
EASL, The International Liver Congress 2012
22-25 April 2012
2nd International Workshop on HIV Treatment as Prevention (TasP)
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Welcome
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Dear Reader,
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Hepatitis C is often called a ‘silent epidemic’ because people can be infected for many years without any symptoms. Recognition of this disease as a major public health challenge has grown over the last few years and it is now believed that around 180 million people are infected worldwide, with 3-4 million new infections reported each year.
In this newsletter, we will take an in-depth look at Hepatitis C virus (HCV). In an interview with Marc van der Valk, internist-infectiologist at the AMC, he explains the current and future treatment of HCV. He is joined by fellow internist at the AMC, Jan van der Meer who in his interview focuses on treatment of HCV in HIV-infected patients. In another interview, Clemens Richter, internist-infectiologist at Rijnstate, Arnhem, discusses the importance of collecting data on HCV and HBV in HIV-infected patients. Colette Smit, SHM epidemiologist, and Anna Janssen, SHM data monitor, will also give an overview of the work SHM is doing in relation to HCV data collection and analysis.
As always, we are interested in your thoughts and suggestions regarding the newsletter so please contact us if you have any remarks.
Kind regards,
Frank de Wolf
Director, Stichting HIV Monitoring
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To treat or not to treat – Dr. Marc van der Valk discusses treatment of HCV infection
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Dr. Marc van der Valk works as an internist-infectiologist at the department of Infectious Diseases and at the department of Hepatology of the Academic Medical Center (AMC), University of Amsterdam. At his outpatient clinic, he is responsible for the clinical care of a large cohort of individuals infected with viral hepatitis. Furthermore, he has extensive clinical and research experience in HIV care. He agreed to talk to us about his knowledge and experience in treating hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Read more
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| Treating HCV infection in HIV patients – An interview with Dr. Jan T.M. van der Meer |
As an internist in the department of Infectious Diseases at the AMC in Amsterdam, Dr. van der Meer treats a broad range of conditions and diseases. In the AMC outpatient facilities the majority of patients he treats are infected with HIV. Within this patient group he is treating an increasing number of HCV infections. Dr. van der Meer met with us to share his expertise in treating HCV infection in HIV co-infected patients. Read more
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| The value of hepatitis-related data collection – Dr. Clemens Richter explains |
Dr. Clemens Richter has been an internist-infectiologist at Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem since 1997. He is specialised in treating HIV, hepatitis, tropical diseases, immune diseases and other infectious diseases and recently won the “Mednet Top Physician 2011, Internal Medicine” award. He is the chairman of the Hepatitis B/Hepatitis C (HBV/HCV) Working Group which is a collaboration of the Dutch Association of HIV-treating Physicians (NVHB) and Stichting HIV Monitoring (SHM). The group was set up in 2010 to review broadening the range of hepatitis-related data collected by SHM and to prepare data collection for the new HCV medications now becoming available. During an interview, Dr Richter kindly agreed to explain his ideas on the value of collecting data related to hepatitis infection. Read more
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| Monitoring of HIV and viral hepatitis |
In this article, Colette Smit and Anna Jansen discuss the contribution SHM makes in monitoring hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections. Colette Smit is an epidemiologist at SHM, with a research focus on developing statistical models to understand the role of HBV and HCV co-infection in HIV disease progression and the impact of treatment of co-infections on this progression. Anna Jansen is a data monitor at SHM. She is responsible for managing the implementation of any hepatitis-related dataset changes within SHM’s database. Read more
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| Conference review – CROI 2012, Seattle |
The 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place from 5 to 8 March in Seattle. Here’s a small selection of the many topics that were discussed. Read more
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| Publication Review |
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A selection of research including SHM data that was published during Q1, 2012:
Long-term complications in patients with poor immunological recovery despite virological successful HAART in Dutch ATHENA cohort. Following two years of combination therapy, over a quarter of HIV patients still have CD4-cell counts less than 350 cells/mm3 despite good virological response. These patients have an increased risk of developing severe long-term complications. Starting treatment on time is therefore important. Read the abstract
Single Nucleotide Polymorphism in Gene Encoding Transcription Factor Prep1 Is Associated with HIV-1-Associated Dementia. AIDS dementia and less severe HIV-related neurocognitive disorders seem to be partly genetically determined. Which specific human DNA genes are related to this is not entirely clear. Sebastiaan Bol and colleagues examined 12 candidate genes and ultimately identified one gene that increases the risk of AIDS dementia. Read the abstract
Calendar Time Trends in the Incidence and Prevalence of Triple-Class Virologic Failure in Antiretroviral Drug-Experienced People with HIV in Europe. The PLATO II study examined virological failure amongst 91,764 HIV-infected patients. Failure was shown to occur in 3% of treated patients. In recent years, there is a decreasing chance of failure. This is probably due to better treatment options. Read the abstract
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Facts and figures
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The Netherlands Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Prevention and Treatment (NCHIV) was held for the 5th time in November 2011. During the conference there were 303 attendees, 17 oral presentations, 56 poster presentations and 700 bread rolls served.
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© Stichting HIV Monitoring, 2012
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