This study will investigate the feasibility of treating people who inject drugs (PWID) with hepatitis C virus (HCV) in community-based settings with a 12-week course of oral therapy combination of sofosbuvir plus ledipasvir (SOF + LDP). It will also measure the effectiveness of using a social network-based approach (bring your friends) to reduce HCV incidence among PWID. Participants will initially be sourced from the Burnet Institute's existing SuperMIX cohort (N= 757). This cohort comprises PWID followed for between two and six years (median=1057 days), of whom 299 have chronic HCV infection. The HCV genotype distribution in the SuperMIX cohort is: HCV-1 (55%); HCV-3 (40%) and HCV-6 (<5%).~Participants will be randomly allocated to three groups:~Group 1: Primary (n=40) and secondary (n=100) participants will receive supportive care only.~Group 2: Primary participants (n=40) will be treated with SOF + LDP for 12 weeks. Secondary participants (n=100) will receive supportive care only.~Group 3: Primary (n=40) and secondary participants with chronic HCV infection (n=50%*100) will be treated with SOF + LDP for 12 weeks. Participants in Group C who have evidence of HCV re-infection will be offered re-treatment with SOF + LDP for 12 weeks.~Treatment participants will have a clinical review, questionnaire and blood sample collected at baseline, weeks 4, 8 and 12 (end-of-treatment), and at weeks 12 (SVR12), 24 (SVR24), 36, 48, 60 and 72 post-treatment. Non-treatment participants will have a clinical review, questionnaire and blood sample collected at baseline and weeks 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72 and 84.
This study will investigate the feasibility of treating people who inject drugs (PWID) with hepatitis C virus (HCV) in community-based settings with a 12-week course of oral therapy combination of sofosbuvir plus ledipasvir. It will also measure the effectiveness of using a social network-based approach to reduce HCV incidence among PWID.