Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection affects as many as 250,000 Canadians. Most infected Canadians are baby boomers, born between 1945-1975, and have been living with HCV for decades. Although effective treatments are available, uptake remains low and HCV-infected Canadians remain at risk for liver disease. As this population ages, they will start experiencing additional non-liver comorbidities, such as diabetes, kidney, and cardiovascular disease. These additional comorbidities will result in increased health-care utilization and expenditures, hospitalizations and mortality among people living with HCV. There are no Canadian estimates of the non-liver-related disease burden associated with HCV. I, therefore, propose to use a combination of public health surveillance and administrative hospital data from British Columbia to develop a population-based study i) examining rates of non-liver comorbidities and health-care service utilization and ii) assess the impact that new HCV treatments will have on these rates. Results from this study can be used to improve both clinical and population health practices in Canada. First, results will help inform target treatment strategies by identifying those patients at greatest risk of developing non liver-related comorbidities associated with HCV. Second, this project can help identify areas where additional allocation of resources will be necessary to manage chronic comorbidities associated with aging. Lastly, this study will provide a better understanding of the strengths, challenges and limitations associated with using administrative data for population health research and will help develop the application of novel methodological techniques in epidemiologic research.