P20: Understanding the impact of a cure for hepatitis C from the patient perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and treatment can have significant health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) and clinical impacts (1). As many patients undergoing treatment for HCV are relatively asymptomatic, it is unclear how HRQoL domains such as social stigma or the knowledge of having HCV are impacted by being cured with HCV treatment. The objective of this research was to explore the meaning and effects of being cured of HCV from the patient perspective. Canadian adults diagnosed with HCV were recruited by a market research firm; recruitment was stratified according to whether individuals were treatment-naïve, currently- or previously-treated but not cured, or cured. All eligible participants completed one-on-one qualitative interviews with trained interviewers. The interviews were semi-structured, following an interview guide developed through literature review and clinical expert consultation, and included both open-ended and focused questions on perceptions of the HRQoL impacts of HCV, and the impacts of being cured. All interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis was conducted using MaxQDA software to identify key concepts associated with being cured of HCV. A conceptual model was developed to illustrate the relationships between the themes. The twenty-five interviews were conducted among eight treatment-naïve, nine currently- or previously-treated but not cured, and eight cured participants. The mean age was 52 years; 80% were male. Key themes pertaining to HCV infection included fear of worsening health, especially liver disease and death; fear of infecting others; and reduced energy. Although patients acknowledged that treatment caused emotional and physical side effects, the vast majority perceived that treatment was worthwhile for a chance of a cure. Patients noted numerous potential impacts of a cure, including being relieved, regaining energy, improvements in close relationships and self-esteem, reduced mental burden and stress about future health, reduced feelings of isolation, and a general improvement in mood and positive outlook on life. Findings from these qualitative interviews demonstrate that HCV infection imposes a substantial psychosocial burden among patients. This research highlights the many areas where patients may benefit from being cured of HCV. 1. Spiegel BMR, Younossi ZM, Hays RD, Revicki D, Robbins S, Kanwal F. Impact of hepatitis C on health related quality of life: A systematic review and quantitative assessment. Hepatology 2005; 41(4): 790–800.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".