Chronic Hepatitis C Diagnosis and Treatment - Essay Example

"Chronic Hepatitis C Diagnosis and Treatment" is a decent example of a paper on infections.

Patient HL comes into the clinic with the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The patient has a history of drug abuse, and possible Hepatitis C. HL is currently taking the following prescription drugs:

Synthroid 100 mcg daily

Nifedipine 30mg daily

Prednisone 10mg daily

Diagnosis

The patient has a chronic hepatitis C infection. This infection is linked to his previous history of drug abuse. Direct contact with an infected person's blood might be the source of his illness. (Lauer & Walker, 2001). Because HCV is highly transmissible through the blood, Injecting drug users (IDUs) contract hepatitis C by sharing contaminated needles and other drug injection paraphernalia with people already infected.

The use of Synthroid is an indication of autoimmune manifestations in the patient, in this case, hypothyroidism. Prednisone use might also exponentially increase HCV viremia, although its immunosuppression properties might be expected to reduce host-mediated inflammatory pathways that lead to liver damage. It may even lower immune defenses against direct virally mediated liver injury. The symptoms he is presenting with might be the side effects of the drugs he already is on.

Drug therapy plan

A triple therapy regimen is recommended if the patient is Genotype 1. This regimen is:

• Peginterferon alfa-2a (Pegasys) {180µg SQ once/week}
• Ribavirin {If less than 75kg: 1000mg/day, split BID}

{If ≥75kg: 1200mg/day, split BID} (Hoofnagle & Seeff, 2006)

• Boceprevir (Victrelis) {800mg q8h}

OR

Telaprevir (Incivek) {750mg q8h} (Jacobson et al., 2011)

If the patient is HCV Genotype 2 or 3, a double-therapy regimen is recommended. The regimen is:

• Peginterferon alfa-2a (Pegasys) {180µg SQ once/week}
• Ribavirin {800mg/day, split BID}

Due to autoimmune features, combination therapy of high dose prednisone (30mg daily) and azathioprine (150mg daily) is administered with amounts varying between the induction and maintenance phases (Yehia et al., 2014).

Synthroid drug should also be continued as previously prescribed (100mcg/day) to correct thyroid dysfunction caused by the chronicity of hepatitis C.

Nifedipine administration is stopped as its continued use can further damage the liver, ranging from mild and transient serum enzyme elevations to self-limited jaundice to an alcoholic hepatitis-like syndrome (Yusuf et al., 2018).