55th Annual Meeting of the American Society for the Study of Liver Diseases (55th AASLD), 29 October – 2 November, 2004, Boston MA

29 January 2005. Related: On the web.

Community attendance to this annual hepatic meeting which this year coincided with the ICAAC meeting reported above is generally less supported, and neither abstracts nor oral presentations are provided online.

Focussing on HBV, the meeting included comparative studies with existing treatments: mainly adefovir, lamivudine and peginterferon (pagITN) plus a range of studies on new and pipeline HBV compounds including clevudine, emtracitabine (FTC), entecavir, telbivudine and alamifovir.

HCV-related studies included further results in HIV/HCV coinfected patients form the APRICOT study, including data on histological response to pegIFN. Interesting data from the COPILOT study in HCV monoinfected patients suggested a benefit in terms of prevented or delayed liver disease from low-dose (half-dose) pegIFN as maintenance therapy in patients who have previously failed IFN-based treatment.

The best coverage of studies from this meeting are on the following sites:

HIV and Hepatitis
www.hivandhepatitis.com/2004icr/aasld/main.html

NATAP
www.natap.org

Clinical Options
clinicaloptions.com/hep/conf/aasld2004