New HCV Treatments in Clinical Practice

Call for Papers

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major contributor to morbidity and mortality worldwide. Considerable progress has been made towards understanding the HCV life cycle, its pathogenesis and the effects of drug therapy on the viral load. Yet, around 50% of patients who receive treatment with the standard of care do not achieve sustained virological response (SVR). The newly licensed direct acting antivirals (DAA) for HCV treatment, telaprevir, and boceprevir are able to cure up to 75% of patients chronically infected with genotype-1. Still, not all patients attain SVR with the triple therapy. Emerging antiviral therapies promise further increases in virological response, as well as improved tolerability, reduced duration of therapy, and will potentially eliminate the need for interferon use. Obviously, the next decade will be a crucial period in the public health approach to HCV infection.

We invite authors to submit original and review articles on treatment of patients with chronic HCV infection in clinical practice. We are interested in articles that explore aspects of new HCV treatment options, that highlight the main therapeutic agents used in current standard of care, including telaprevir and boceprevir, and that evaluate the mechanisms of emerging drugs, their stage of development, and response rates seen in research to date. Finally we are interested in articles that consider treatment strategies involving combinations of agents and interferon-free therapies. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Understanding HCV life cycle
• HCV treatment with protease inhibitors (PI) in naïve patients (new standard of care treatment and guidelines)
• DAA treatment in experienced patients
• Managing the side effects of HCV protease inhibitor based treatment
• Clinical importance of HCV resistant variants
• Non-DAA-treatment options: the role of cyclophilin/micro-RNA and interferon lambda
• New DAA-treatment options: (second wave of PIs/nucs/non-nucs), new treatment options (triple - quad therapy/interferon free)

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijhep/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ijhep/clinic/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• George Zacharakis, 2nd Department of Gastroenterology, Evangelismos General Hospital of Athens, Ipsilantou 45-47, 10676 Athens, Greece

Guest Editors

• Maria Buti, Hospital General Universitario Valle d'Hebron, Paseo Valle Hebron 119, 08035 Barcelona, Spain
• Tommaso Stroffolini, Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Policlinico Umberto I, Rome, Italy
• Peter Karayiannis, Hepatology and Gastroenterology Section, Department of Medicine, Imperial College London, Variety Wing Floor D, St. Mary's Campus, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, UK