CovOps
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| Subject: Hepatitis C, a Silent Killer, Meets Its Match Mon Nov 04, 2013 8:36 pm | |
| Determined to get rid of the hepatitis C infection that was slowly destroying his liver, Arthur Rubens tried one experimental treatment after another. None worked, and most brought side effects, like fever, insomnia, depression, anemia and a rash that “felt like your skin was on fire.”
But this year, Dr. Rubens, a professor of management at Florida Gulf Coast University, entered a clinical trial testing a new pill against hepatitis C. Taking it was “a piece of cake.” And after three months of treatment, the virus was cleared from his body at last.
“I had a birthday in September,” Dr. Rubens, 63, said. “I told my wife I don’t want anything. It would take away from the magnitude of this gift.”
Medicine may be on the brink of an enormous public health achievement: turning the tide against hepatitis C, a silent plague that kills more Americans annually than AIDS and is the leading cause of liver transplants. If the effort succeeds, it will be an unusual conquest of a viral epidemic without using a vaccine.
“There is no doubt we are on the verge of wiping out hepatitis C,” said Dr. Mitchell L. Shiffman, the director of the Bon Secours Liver Institute of Virginia and a consultant to many drug companies.
Over the next three years, starting within the next few weeks, new drugs are expected to come to market that will cure most patients with the virus, in some cases with a once-a-day pill taken for as little as eight weeks, and with only minimal side effects.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/health/hepatitis-c-a-silent-killer-meets-its-match.html?google_editors_picks=true&_r=0 |
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