Injection Drug Users Do Very Well on Sovaldi-Based Hep C Treatment

Hepatitis C and Injection Drug Users

Although hepatitis C can be contracted in numerous ways, the most common method of transmission is through the use of an infected needle. This sometimes occurs when a person receives a tattoo at an unlicensed facility, but most often occurs when a person uses intravenous drugs. During the drug use process, it is common for a user to share needles with others who are using or to use a needle they find if they are using somewhere where many go to use. When one person uses a needle, their blood and any blood-borne illnesses and viruses are transferred to the needle. When another uses that same needle, they introduce the illnesses and viruses to their own blood stream. Since hepatitis C often shows no symptoms in the body and since IV drug users’ bodies are often experiencing symptoms of drug use or drug withdrawal, a person who has been exposed to the hepatitis C virus may not know it for years or even decades. This means that they may be contributing to the spread of the virus by sharing their own needles, without even knowing it.

Injection Drug Users and Hepatitis C Treatment

For a period of time, researchers and medical professionals did not anticipate IV drug users to be a good fit for hepatitis C treatment. This is because most treatments for this virus require a consistent regimen of taking their medications on time each day for a period of several weeks or months, something that can be very tricky for a drug user to abide by as their focus may not be on maintaining a consistent schedule for such a long period of time. In addition, many hepatitis C drugs are expensive and require the use of health insurance to be affordable, something that many drug users do not have as many lack employment or enough income to pay for private health insurance. With this thought in mind, it was fairly common for those diagnosed with hepatitis C to be recommended to a treatment program, with the intent to focus first on sobriety and then on the treatment of the virus itself. The expectation was that this order of treatment would be more likely to result in consistent treatment methods for the virus and thus an outcome that resulted in a person who was both sober and free of the hepatitis C virus.

What is Sovaldi and Why Does It Work for IV Drug Users?