An update on the management of hepatitis C: guidelines for protease inhibitor-based triple therapy from the Latin American Association for the Study of the Liver.

Hepatitis C is a common cause of end-stage liver disease, and the main indication for liver transplantation in Latin America. Treatment of hepatitis C infected patients improves important long-term outcomes as mortality. Sustained viral response is reached in near 50% of patients with the previous management based in pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Recently new drugs were available increasing sustained viral response significantly, changing the standard of care to triple therapy. This guidelines provides a framework for practitioner in Latin America, to the management of patients with hepatitis C chronic infection. 

Clinical approach to the patient with chronic hepatitis C infection and normal aminotransferases.

Approximately 30% of patients with chronic HCV infection have persistently normal alanine aminotransferase levels (PNALT). Most of these patients have minimal or mild inflammation and absent or minimal fibrosis, although occasionally cirrhosis and hepatocarcinoma may be seen. Overall, liver histology is significantly less severe than in patients with elevated ALT levels, and most follow-up studies have reported stability of the disease, with minimal fibrosis progression over years, and thus a disease with a favorable prognosis. Nevertheless, a few studies have shown more recently that many patients with PNALT, may have elevations in ALT over time, and almost 20-30% have a significant progression of fibrosis, being eligible for antiviral therapy. During the last decade it has been demonstrated that in chronic HCV infection with PNALT, combination antiviral therapy with peg interferon-alpha plus ribavirin is efficacious, safe, and associated with significant improvements in health-related quality of life, and the decision whether to treat or not this patients should be based on multiple factors including: age, HCV genotype, histology, patients motivation and adherence, symptoms and comorbidity, rather than on ALT levels alone.