Pavol Kristian, Ivan Schréter
There are approximately 71 million people with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) worldwide. In Slovakia, the prevalence
of chronic infection was observed at 0.67 % of the adult population. CHC is currently a very well treatable disease,
the interferon-free therapy reaches an efficacy of more than 95 %, is well tolerated and safe. Further progress has
been made with the introduction of new pangenotypic regimes, which allow the treatment of patients independently
of the virus genotype with the same combination of antiviral drugs and for a substantial part of them, to shorten the
treatment to only 8 weeks. They are particularly beneficial for patients with HCV genotype 3 who have not yet had
reliable interferon-free therapy. For these reasons, screening of hepatitis C should also be improved, as a large proportion
of infected patients are still undiagnosed.