Hepatitis C virus treatment failure: Clinical utility for testing resistance-associated substitutions

Abstract

The hepatitis C virus has a high mutation capacity that leads to the emergence of resistance-associated substitutions (RAS). However, the consequence of resistance selection during new direct-acting antiviral drug (DAA) treatment is not necessarily the therapeutic failure. In fact, DAA treatment has shown a high rate (> 95%) of sustained virological response even when high baseline RAS prevalence has been reported. In the context of RAS emergence and high rates of sustained viral response, the clinical relevance of variants harboring RAS is still controversial. Therefore, in order to summarize the data available in international guidelines, we have reviewed the clinical utility of testing RAS in the era of new pangenotypic DAA drugs.