The path to personalised hepatitis D treatment

Looking for new strategies for personalised treatment of hepatitis D: Professor Dr Heiner Wedemeyer ( left ) and Professor Dr Markus Cornberg Copyright: Karin Kaiser / MHH - EU supports multicentre project with a total of 6.75 million euros Hepatitis D is by far the most severe form of chronic viral hepatitis, often leading to liver failure, liver cancer and death. However, knowledge about the disease is still very limited. The reason why those affected have very different courses of the disease is also still unknown. An international research project led by Heiner Wedemeyer, Director of the MHH Clinic for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology at the Hannover Medical School (MHH), now aims to clarify this. Together with the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM), an institution of the MHH and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, the research team wants to study a large multicentre cohort of hepatitis D patients to better understand which personal characteristics determine the outcome of the infection. The D-SOLVE project ("Understanding the individual host response against Hepatitis D Virus to develop a personalised approach for the management of hepatitis D") is funded by the European Union for four years with a total of 6.75 million euros. Around two million euros of this will go to the MHH.