Drug Resistance Profile and Clinical Features for Hepatitis C Patients Experiencing DAA Failure in Taiwan

Abstract

About 4% of the population in Taiwan are seropositive for anti-HCV Ab and 70% with HCV RNA. To address this high chronic hepatitis C disease load, Taiwan National Health Insurance started reimbursing genotype-specific DAAs in 2017 and pangenotype DAAs in mid-2018. With a 97% SVR12 rate, there were still 2-3% of patients that failed to clear HCV. To understand the causes of DAA failure in Taiwan, we conducted a multi-center, clinical, and virologic study. A total of 147 DAA-failure patients were recruited, and we searched HCV NS3/4A, NS5A and NS5B for known resistance-associated substitutions (RASs) by population sequencing, and conducted whole genome sequencing (WGS) for those without known RASs. A total of 107 patients received genotype-specific DAAs while 40 had pangenotype DAAs. Clinically, the important cause of failure is poor adherence. Virologically, common RASs in genotype-specific DAAs were NS5A-L31, NS5A-Y93, and NS5B-C316, while common RASs in pangenotype DAAs were NS5A-L31, NS5A-A/Q/R30, and NS5A-Y93. Additionally, new amino acid changes were found by WGS. Finally, we identified 12 cases with inconsistent baseline and post-treatment HCV genotypes, which is suggestive of re-infection rather than treatment failure. Our study described the drug resistance profile for DAA failure in Taiwan, showing differences from other countries.

Keywords: Taiwan; chronic hepatitis C; direct-acting antiviral agent; resistance-associated substitution; treatment failure; whole genome sequencing.

Figure 1

Timeline of DAA reimbursement in National Health Insurance (NHI) in Taiwan.

Figure 2

Summary of (A) RASs in patients with genotype-specific DAA treatment and (B) cases with different baseline/post-treatment HCV genotype. “−”, negative.

Figure 3

Summary of (A) RASs in patients with pan-genotype DAA treatment and (B) cases with different baseline/post-treatment HCV genotype. “+”, positive; “−”, negative.

Figure 4

Comparison of RAS prevalence with other studies. (A) RAS prevalence compared to studies of Japan [23] and Spain [24]; (B) Detailed comparison of RAS prevalence for each DAA treatment to study results of Japan [23].