Taking care of hepatitis C now and looking toward the future

An effective vaccine is the next logical step in the battle against hepatitis C. Christopher O'Brien, MD offers his perspective on the development of such an advancement in this video.

Transcript

00:00

I'm very much an optimist. I'm not so sure I'm an optimist on the vaccine quite yet.

00:06

The virus is very good at mutating its surface and developing resistance to everything

00:12

that we've tried so far.

00:21

I may be wrong. But that's going to be a little bit more of a difficult issue than the actual treatment of the disease.

00:29

And unfortunately, once you get hepatitis C once, it doesn't protect you against getting it again.

00:35

You can get it again a week later, get treated again, and get it a third time. So there's still a unmet need for a vaccine.

00:45

Patients have to understand how serious the disease is.

00:51

We have to educate them on the fact we put so much emphasis on the virus being undetectable in the blood that,

01:01

in some ways, that works against you because if it's undetectable in the blood, well, then, aren't I cured already?

01:08

What is the next six weeks supposed to do? And so I think we have to educate patients

01:15

at the beginning that undetectable in the blood is not undetectable in the liver.