In first wave first generation drugs telaprevir

In 2013, first-wave, first-generation drugs telaprevir and boceprevir was the first protease inhibitors (PIs) incorporated in Brazilian Clinical Guidelines for the treatment of patients infected with HCV SCH 39166 hydrobromide australia 1. Based on this 2013 Clinical Guideline, telaprevir could be used for both naïve and experienced patients whereas boceprevir was only indicated for treatment-naïve patients with advanced fibrosis METAVIR F3 and F4. Its combination with peg-IFN/RBV yielded an improvement in the SVR rate up to 75% [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. Nonetheless, significant side effects and unsatisfactory efficiency against genotype 1 highlighted the necessity of development of compounds targeting different viral proteins in order to achieve higher SVR rates and viral clearance. More recently, other HCV PIs have been incorporated to Clinical Guidelines and can be prescribed irrespective of patients’ treatment records. Simeprevir, a second-wave, first-generation NS3/4A PI, daclatasvir (NS5A inhibitor) and sofosbuvir (NS5B polymerase inhibitor) were approved for clinical use in Brazil in 2015. Its genotypic coverage is broader than that of the first-wave drugs, including at least genotypes 1, 2, and 4 [13]. In 2017, paritaprevir in combination with ombitasvir, ritonavir and dasabuvir has been licensed in Brazil for subtype 1a patients without cirrhosis and for subtype 1b patients with compensated cirrhosis (Child–Pugh A). A second-generation PI, grazoprevir, co-administrated with elbasvir was incorporated in clinical protocol for patients infected with HCV genotype 1 and 4. Pangenotypic PIs, such as glecaprevir and voxilaprevir, are not yet registered in Brazilian regulatory agency however represents a promising alternative for patients with or without cirrhosis. The occurrence of naturally HCV NS3 resistance-associated substitutions (RAS) affects virological outcome of DAA-based combination therapies [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]. For the majority of NS3 protease inhibitors the frequency of natural occurrence of single RASs in HCV genotype 1-infected patients is between 0.1% and 3.1% [20] and patients who failed to respond to simeprevir treatment had mutations at NS3 positions 80, 122, 155, and/or 168 [21]. Naturally occurring resistance have been reported in 4.1% to 18.9% of HCV infected patients with baseline NS3 mutations [22], [23]. Detecting resistant variants at baseline in treatment-naïve patients infected with genotype 1 strains could represent an important background information to a more specific and efficient clinical conduct. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of naturally occurring RASs in the serine protease domain of HCV NS3 region in patients chronically infected with subtypes 1a and 1b.
Patients and methods
Results Overall RAS prevalence in this study was 13.7% (10/73). Among 73 patients enrolled in this study, 15 were treatment-experienced with first-wave PIs telaprevir/boceprevir (group 1) and 58 have not been treated with DAAs (group 2). The observation of amino acid residues of HCV NS3 in group 2 identified RASs at positions 36, 43, 54 and 80 in 6/58 (10.3%) patients. Regarding group 1 patients, RASs were identified in 4/15 (26.7%) at positions 36 (n = 3) and 155 (n = 1) in HCV 1a sequences. Regarding HCV subtypes, the frequency of RAS in subtype 1b was 17.4% (4/23) while in subtype 1a was 12% (6/50). Primary mutations V36M and R155K were observed only in HCV subtype 1a, whereas T54S and Q80K were identified only in HCV subtype 1b. The positions 156 and 168, which are highly related to resistance to PIs, remained conserved in all 73 sequences. The association between amino acid mutations identified in NS3 region and resistance to protease inhibitors for HCV subtypes 1a and 1b is exposed in Table 3. Regarding patients infected with HCV subtype 1a, 28.6% (4/14) from group 1 presented RASs while resistance strains were identified in 5.6% (2/36) of the individuals from group 2 (P = 0.044). For both groups, substitutions were observed at NS3 residue 36: 3 patients from group 1 presented RAS V36M and a combination of V36M+R155K was identified in another individual. For group 2, resistance strains V36L and V36M were found in two non-experienced patients.