New Treatments in Chronic Liver Disease 2013

 This CME conference will review new medications and therapies that are available, or will soon be available, and discuss their comparative values. The results of trials using new drugs to treat chronic viral hepatitis B and C, non-alcoholic fatty liver diseases, cholangiocarcinoma, primary biliary cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis, hepatocellular carcinoma and complications of end-stage liver disease will be reviewed in detail. New Treatments in Chronic Liver Disease is a comprehensive yet concise program for updating physicians on these and other commonly encountered problems in the treatment of liver diseases.

There was a fundamental change in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C in 2012 with the addition of direct-acting antiviral (DAAs) drugs to current standard of care. There will be two separate lectures devoted to this topic this year. The first will be on triple therapies which were approved in 2011. The second will be on future therapies using two or more DAA’s, with or without interferons.

We anticipate that there will be a number of new demands placed on treatment providers, including: different pretreatment predictors, viral resistance monitoring, rash and anemia management, and learning different therapeutic regimens. Looking beyond 2013, we see numerous combinations of DAA’s in development including protease inhibitors, nucleoside polymerase inhibitors, non-nucleoside polymerase inhibitors and N55A inhibitors. All of these agents are entering phase 3 development rapidly. In hepatitis B, the treatments have not changed but there are more mature data available on renal resistance, long-term HBsAg loss and clinical outcomes. New therapies for NAFLD and NASH are in development and will be explored. The explosive growth of NASH in the US has created a significant need for effective drug therapy. The diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma will be updated as this disease is one of the few cancers with a growing incidence in the US. New oral therapy is moving this field forward. There will be an update on management of hepatic encephalopathy, hyponatremia and the management of pulmonary complications in the transplant candidate.