Healthy Hepper Newsletter: May 4, 2009


Exciting New Hep C Info:

1. New Website page on Hep and LDN

2. Drug means new era of treatment for hepatitis C



1. New Website page on Hep and LDN

Please visit http://www.healthyhepper.com/LDN.htm

to see the brand new web page created on LDN as alternative treatment for
hepatitis.

"LDN may well be the most important therapeutic breakthrough in over fifty
years. It provides a new method of medical treatment by mobilizing the natural
defenses of one's own immune system." — David Gluck, MD



2. Drug means new era of treatment' for hepatitis C

By SARAH AVERY

http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_12257983
McClatchy Newspapers
04/29/2009 09:57:36 PM EDT

RALEIGH, N.C. - A new drug appears to cure far more people of hepatitis C and
does it in half the time of current therapies, researchers at Duke University
report Thursday.

The drug is now in the final testing stages. If all goes well, it could be on
the market in 2011.

"People believe this is a really significant improvement in how we'll be able to
care for patients with hepatitis C," said Dr. John McHutchison, a Duke doctor
who studies liver diseases and the lead investigator of the study, which is
published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The disease, spread by a virus in blood, is the leading cause of liver
transplants in the United States.

Many people who have hepatitis C have no symptoms for years and even decades.

They are diagnosed only when they begin suffering liver disease or the virus is
detected in a blood test.

Currently, treatment cures about 41 percent of patients. And it is expensive,
costing upwards of $20,000 for a full regimen.

It is also notoriously challenging. Patients must get weekly shots for nearly a
year, plus take daily pills. Side effects are numerous and often debilitating
-anxiety, depression, fatigue, headache, fever, poor appetite, dry mouth and
sores, hair loss, nausea and chest pains.

"It's really devastating," said Ron Smith, 55, of Wilmington, N.C., who was
diagnosed with the disease in 2001 and underwent treatment that he says made him
feel like he had been hit with the flu for a year.

"It just unplugs the life out of you."

The new drug, called telaprevir, works by disabling the virus's ability to
reproduce. It's designed to be used in conjunction with the current therapies,so
patients would still face the potential side effects. But because it cuts the
length of time on therapy to just six months, many more patients might stick
with the treatments.

"That would help so many people," Smith said, noting that he has counseled
numerous people who have had to drop out of treatment because they couldn't
tolerate it.

"Obviously a lot of this stuff will impact overall quality of life and
relationships," said Tim Virgilio, a social worker at the Durham VA Medical
Center who coordinates the hospital's hepatitis C support group.

Virgilio and others who work with hepatitis C patients said they were eager for
a new drug and that the telaprevir therapy has been widely anticipated. Another
drug that operates on the same principle is in the pipeline, but a report last
fall indicated many people found it too harsh.

McHutchison at Duke said telaprevir also has side effects; it appears to worsen
rashes and anemia associated with traditional therapies. Still, the drug is
being welcomed as the brightest treatment prospect in years for hepatitis C.

An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine calls telaprevir a "material
advance in the therapy of hepatitis C, beginning a new era of treatment."

The last big breakthrough for the liver disease was in 2001, when the Food and
Drug Administration approved a time-release formula of the antiviral drug
interferon. That allowed patients to get weekly injections of the drug instead
of three times a week.

Still, much remains to be determined. The telaprevir drug trial has enrolled
1,000 patients for the final Phase 3 study before FDA approval. And it's unknown
how much it will add to the cost of already expensive therapies.

Susan Thompson, adult viral hepatitis prevention coordinator with the state
Division of Public Health, said she hopes that by shortening the duration of
treatment, the new drug could actually reduce costs.

Even if it doesn't, though, she said patients would welcome the prospect of
cutting their treatment time in half.

Best Wishes,
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