Surveillance of HCV in Uremics and Linking to Medical Care

• Taiwan has the leading prevalence and incidence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) worldwide. Uremic patients on maintenance hemodialysis (HD) are at great risk for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The prevalence and annual incidence of HCV infection in ESRD patients undergoing hemodialysis have been reported to be 10%-59% and 0.2%-6.2%, respectively.
• HCV-related morbidities and mortality remain the major disease burden in the ESRD population. Uremic patients with HCV infection are associated with higher risk of excess risk of cardiovascular disease, hospitalization, worse quality of life, and mortality, and have more profound anemia compared to those without HCV infection..
• Imperatively, uremic patients remain at high risk of HCV new- or re-infection in the hemodialysis units.
• The investigators have performed a surveillance for prevalence of viral hepatitis in a collaborative group of Nephrologists and Hepatologists, the FORMOSA-LIKE group, which showed that the proportion of anti-HCV seropositivity in uremic patients is 15-19 % with the viremic rate of ~75% in Southern Taiwan in 2012. However, the update seroprevalence and disease severity of HCV infection among the uremic patients in the era of DAA in Taiwan is unknown. The current study aims to fully execute the surveillance program among the uremic population
• Participants with HCV infection will be directly linked to medical care without gap. The concept of micro-elimination in the high risk environment would help to facilitate WHO goal of HCV elimination by 2030.
• Understanding the potential drug-drug interaction (DDI) between directly acting antivirals (DAA) and co-medications for co-morbidities among uremic patients under maintenance hemodialysis would be helpful for decision-making when linking to care.
• Comprehensive surveillance and link-to-care among hemodialysis units might have great impact on the improvement of both liver-related (biochemical and virological responses, and hepatic fibrosis regression) and non-liver related outcomes (monthly erythropoietin requirement and quality of life), and the transfer rate of clean zoning among HCV-viremic patients.

All uremic participants will be tested for anti-HCV antibody. HCV virology including viral loads (and genotypes if RNA seropositivity) will be further tested in patients with anti-HCV seropositivity. All infected subjects will be evaluated for the liver fibrosis by non-invasive methods including fibroscan, FIB-4 and APRI and Serum WFA(+) -M2BP. All participants with chronic hepatitis C infection will be directly referred to the collaborative Hepatology Departments in one medical center and 5 regional core hospitals for HCV treatment. The outcome of HCV-related diseases, in terms of proportion of HCV micro-elimination in HD facilities, liver-related outcomes (biochemistry improvement [ ALT and AFP decline], sustained virological response rate, and hepatic fibrosis regression) and non-liver related outcomes [monthly erythropoietin requirement, and quality of life [SF36, HCV-CLDQ] ) will be evaluated 2 years after executing link-to-care strategy.

Year 1: Universal screen, confirmative determination of HCV viremia, genotyping and disease staging, education and link-to-care for HCV treatment in FORMOSA-LIKE collaborative alliances Year 2,3: Re-evaluate liver and non-liver related outcomes, and rate of HCV clean zoning among hemodialysis units.

Inclusion criteria

all uremic patients and medical staffs in the hemodialysis centers

Exclusion criteria

• patients who refuse consents