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Hepatitis C - What does the future hold?
VG Bain
Without question, hepatitis C was the liver disease of the 1990s. New cases continue to emerge at an alarming rate, yet most patients have been infected for many years. Rapid advances have been made in understanding the biology of this virus and its natural history, and, furthermore, effective antiviral therapy has become available (1). Nevertheless, infected patients will slowly progress, leading to many more patients with advanced liver disease. How many cases are there likely to be? How many of these cases will require liver transplantation? For the first time, there are Canadian data to address these questions.
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