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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Dec 27, 2025; 17(12): 110726
Published online Dec 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i12.110726
Published online Dec 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i12.110726
Generic vs brand forms of direct acting antivirals for hepatitis C virus treatment in Egyptian children
Engy Mogahed, Haytham Ghita, Afaf Enayet, Noha Yasin, Hanaa El-Karaksy, The Pediatric Hepatology Unit, Department of Pediatrics, Cairo University, Cairo 12613, Egypt
Author contributions: Mogahed E and El-Karaksy H were involved with study concept, design analyzed the data, performed data interpretation and tables’ design, and wrote the manuscript; Ghita H, Enayet A, and Yasin N were involved with patients’ inclusion and data collection, revised the manuscript; and all authors reviewed and take full responsibility for the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Cairo University, approval No. N-173-2024.
Informed consent statement: The informed consent was waived because of the retrospective nature of the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: All data are available in the manuscript and Supplemental material.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hanaa El-Karaksy, Professor, The Pediatric Hepatology Unit, Department of Pediatrics, Cairo University, 44 Mohy-Eldien Abo Elezz Street, Cairo 12613, Egypt. hanaakaraksy@kasralainy.edu.eg
Received: June 18, 2025
Revised: July 17, 2025
Accepted: November 11, 2025
Published online: December 27, 2025
Processing time: 196 Days and 20.4 Hours
Revised: July 17, 2025
Accepted: November 11, 2025
Published online: December 27, 2025
Processing time: 196 Days and 20.4 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Direct acting antivirals have revolutionized hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment. The high price of the brand forms is a barrier for their use in resource limited countries. The use of the generic forms of direct acting antivirals in adult treatment programs has increased treatment coverage and changed the disease burden. Scanty data are available for their use in children. Our findings support the use of the generic form of sofosbuvir/ledipasvir in HCV infected children. The com