Treatment of Recurrent Hepatitis C After Liver Transplantation

In France, 50% of the hepatitis C virus carriers develop chronic clinical hepatitis, which may lead to cirrhosis and liver transplantation. Transplant infection by hepatitis C virus is constant after transplantation. This recurrence usually causes chronic liver disease, in 50 to 80% of the patients. The interest of a long-term treatment with ribavirin alone after transplantation has not been clearly demonstrated. The objective of our study is to evaluate the efficacy of ribavirin as a maintenance treatment after a one year interferon-α / ribavirin therapy on hepatitis C recurrence in the transplanted liver.