Three major disease associations have launched a website to provide guidance about managing hepatitis C virus (HCV) for both clinicians and people living with the virus, Healio reports. The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), in collaboration with the International Antiviral Society-USA (IAS-USA), have created HCVguidelines.org, which features recommendations for the testing, treatment and management of those with the virus. The recommendations were created by a panel of 26 liver disease and infectious disease specialists as well as a patient advocate.

At a press conference announcing the site, David Thomas, MD, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was a panel co-chair for IDSA, said that the panel recommends that those who are eligible to take interferon should undergo 12 weeks of therapy with Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) with ribavirin plus weekly pegylated interferon, regardless of hep C genotype. For those who cannot take interferon, the panel recommends 12 weeks of Sovaldi and Janssen’s Olysio (simeprevir) with or without ribavirin. This latter combination has not been approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), so clinicians would need to prescribe it “off label.”

The website will be updated regularly to keep up with this fast-changing field of medicine.

To read the Healio story, click here.

To read the AASLD/IDSA press release, click here.