Author information

¹Department NEUROFARBA University of Florence, Florence, Italy.

²Paediatric and Liver Unit, Meyer Children's Hospital IRCCS, Firenze, Italy.

³Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Liver Transplant, AdventHealth for Children, AdventHealth Transplant Institute, Orlando, Florida, USA.

⁴Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

⁵Department of Paediatrics, Children's Hospital, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.

⁶Department of Paediatrics, Karolinska University Hospital, CLINTEC, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

⁷UCLouvain, Cliniques Universitaires St Luc, Pediatric Hepatology, Brussels, Belgium.

⁸Department of Paediatrics, Helios University Hospital Wuppertal, Witten-Herdecke University, Germany.

⁹Pediatric Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Transplantation, Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII, Bergamo, Italy.

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of chronic liver disease worldwide, with more than three million viraemic adolescents and children. Treatment of adults with HCV infection and HCV-related liver disease has advanced considerably thanks to development and improvements in therapy. Direct-acting antiviral regimens are safe and effective. Three regimens with pangenotypic activity (glecaprevir/pibrentasvir, sofosbuvir/velpatasvir and sofosbuvir/velpatasvir/voxilaprevir) and three regimens with genotype-specific activity (sofosbuvir/ribavirin, sofosbuvir/ledipasvir and elbasvir/grazoprevir) have been approved with age-specific limitation for treatment of children with chronic hepatitis C by the European Medicines Agency and the United States Food and Drug Administration. The World Health Organization has set the ambitious target to eliminate hepatitis C as a major public health threat by 2030 and based its actions against HCV on the large use of direct acting antivirals. These updated European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition recommendations on treatment of hepatitis C describe the optimal therapeutic management of adolescents and children with HCV infection including specific indications for those living in resource-limited settings.