Little known fact: Two-thirds of hepatitis C sufferers are thought to be Baby Boomers.
Good news for those Baby Boomers and others: Two powerful drugs are nearing the market that promise to help cure those suffering from the more people of liver-attacking virus.
On the first point, hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus often associated with people who inject illegal drugs.
But, according to a story from the Associated Press about the new drug treatment, the virus could have begun festering from a blood transfusion before 1992, when testing of the blood supply began.
Since it can take decades for the virus to manifest itself as a full blown illness, casual drug users of the 60s and 70s or blood recipients might be the hepatitis C patients of today and tomorrow.
Some health policy experts are going so far as to suggest hepatitis C testing be part of the Baby Boomer health screening process, as it would for cancer and other age-related diseases and illnesses.
"We're entering a whole new era of therapy," Dr. John Ward, hepatitis chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in the Associated Press story. "We really want to begin that clarion call for action for this population who's at risk."
Current therapy for the virus, according to the story, is a two-drug treatment that has gruelling side effects and only cures about 40 per cent of people with the most common variety of the virus.
Adding a new drug — Vertex Pharmaceuticals' telaprevir or Merck & Co.'s boceprevir — can boost those cure rates as high as 75 per cent. And they allow some people to cut treatment time in half, to six months, thus lessening how long they must deal with those side effects.
It's a drug cocktail akin to the combination of therapies that emerged to treat AIDS.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the drugs this summer.
As for testing Baby Boomers, the CDC has begun a study at four hospitals — in New York, Detroit, Houston and Birmingham, Ala. — to see if a one-time hepatitis C test for Boomers makes sense, according to the AP. Among the boomers, black men in their 50s are at particular risk. CDC plans new guidelines next year.
CORRECTED to replace blood "donors" with blood "recipients."
Comments
. "This preliminary study confirms the benefit of adding Vitamin D to conventional antiviral therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C". states lead investigator, Saif M. Abu-Mouch, MD, from the Department of Hepatology, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Israel. (1)
In the study, 58 patients, the control group, who were diagnosed with HCV, were randomly assigned to the protocol of peginterferon-alfa 2b 1.5 ug/kg once per week and ribavirin 1000 to 2000 mg daily. Thirty-one patients received the same treatment plus Vitamin D 1000 to 4000 IU daily. By the fourth week of treatment, a rapid virological (pertaining to viruses) response was seen in 44% of the patients who received Vitamin D and in 18% of the control group. At the twelfth week of treatment, 96% of the group who received the addition of Vitamin D and 48% of the control group were HCV RNA negative.
It was vitamin D deficiency at the core of Hep C resistance to interferon etc, all the time.
Vitamin D is essentially free.
Ask your doctors why they didn't happen to mention this treatment adjunct?
It is MUCH more effective than the drug company approach and ZERO side effects.
Why would a doctor ignore this easy approach to higher cure rates, otehr than drug company profits and him/her being completely, utterly WRONG?
One does not contract Hepatitis C from the noble act of donating blood.
Thanks. A correction has been made.
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