Hep C Is Manageable—If You Know the Ins and Outs by Larry Buhl You’ve been diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Now what? First, don’t panic. Doctors agree a Hep C diagnosis is not a death sentence. But the virus does require some lifestyle changes and careful monitoring to avoid chronic liver disease. There are a lot of misconceptions in the general public about hepatitis C. We spoke with Lisa Oldson, M.D., an internal medicine physician and medical director for the Analyte Physicians Group in Chicago. Dr. [...]

While federal efforts move forward, hepatitis prevention remains unfunded by Larry Buhl During the seemingly interminable debate over health insurance reform, other health legislation was quietly making its way through Congress. Perhaps it was too quiet. In October, 2009 Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) introduced the bipartisan Viral Hepatitis and Liver Cancer Control and Prevention Act to address the epidemic of hepatitis B and C in the U.S. The bill, with a price tag of $90 million, would have increased the ability of the Centers for [...]

A second hepatitis C antiviral—boceprevir—moves closer to approval

In an Effort to Prevent HCV, One Campaign Is Educating Youth on Body Art Risks by Larry Buhl In the U.S., an estimated thirty-six percent of people under thirty years-old have tattoos. During tattooing, the skin is punctured up to 150 times a second in order to inject color pigments, leaving the customer at risk for blood-borne diseases including HIV and hepatitis C (HCV). According to the CDC, major research studies have not shown HCV to be spread through licensed, commercial tattooing facilities. However, poor [...]

What can we do to address the obstacles to HCV treatment? by Larry Buhl Hepatitis C (HCV) is a “silent killer” in more ways than one. It is a sneaky disease that can leave its victim asymptomatic for many years while doing massive damage to the liver. And too often it’s not talked about, due to stigmatization of the disease. But the alarming statistics regarding hepatitis C are causing more in the medical community to talk about it: Liver cancer, which is often driven by [...]

Hep Talk Hepatitis C Antiviral Telaprevir Moves Closer to Approval by Larry Buhl Researchers in a recent Phase III study are encouraged by the results of a new drug proposed to be used as part of combination therapy treatment for hepatitis C. In the study ending in September, the drug telaprevir resulted in a sustained viral response (SVR or viral cure) for sixty-five percent of people with a telaprevir-based regimen, as compared to seventeen percent of people in the control arm who received pegylated interferon [...]