Matt's Blog

Sign donor cards, she urges
Mon, April 28, 2008
TRANSPLANT VETERAN
By JOE MATYAS
A quarter-century ago, Heather Fisher's chances of living another year were
slim.
Her liver was failing, she was getting weaker and sicker and her time was
running out.
She was given a new lease on life when she became one of the first patients in
London to receive a liver transplant.
Twenty-five years later, Fisher is healthy, happy and working as a nurse in a
London Health Sciences Centre acute pain clinic.
She's been nursing full-time since recovering from the transplant, for several
years as an operating room nurse.
"Although the transplant was done years ago, it feels like yesterday," said
Fisher.
"I think about my good fortune every day and I feel blessed. The gift of the
organ restored my life."
Fisher recently marked the 25th anniversary of her transplant --"liver-versary,"
as she calls it -- on a day spent with London firefighters, her own salute to
Organ Donor Awareness Week.
Although Fisher has to take anti-rejection drugs, she's experienced no
appreciable side-effects from the medication.
"I've been remarkably healthy," she said. "I've never had a serious illness
since the transplant, just the occasional cold or flu."
Fisher urges people to sign organ donation cards.
Across Canada, about 4,000 people are waiting for organs, including 1,800 in
Ontario.
Canada has one of the lowest donation rates in the developed world, said Fisher.
"We can do better as a nation, that's for sure."
Canada's organ donation rate is about 13 donors per one million people, compared
with 20 per million in the U.S. and 31 per million in Spain.
Donation rates vary across Canada, with London -- a leading small organ
transplant centre -- near the top, at 23 per million. As a transplantation
centre, Londoners have learned and heard more about organ donations, said
Fisher.
In the late 1950s, kidney transplants were done in London for the first time at
St. Joseph's Hospital.
University Hospital opened in 1972 and quickly established a transplant program.
The city's first liver transplant was done there in 1977, the first heart
transplant in 1981 and first lung and bone marrow transplants in 1989.
Fisher was the recipient of the fifth liver transplanted in London. Since then,
more than 1,200 others have been done.
Organ donations save lives, she said, adding some people die waiting for one.
"If you decide to become a donor, it's important to sign a donation form and
talk it over with your loved ones so they know your intentions," she said.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2008/04/28/5405431-sun.html

Are You The Creation of Your Own Proactive Design?
To exercise power is to make decisions and the process of making decisions with
total awareness is often infinitely more painful than making decisions with
limited or blunted awareness (which is the way most decisions are made and why
they are ultimately proved wrong). The best decision-makers are those who are
willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability
to be decisive. - The Road Less Traveled
To ease the process of learning, you must first master the basic lessons of
compassion, forgiveness, ethics and ultimately, humor. Without these essential
lessons, you remain trapped in your limited view and unable to parlay mistakes
into valuable learning opportunities. - If Life is a Game, These are the Rules
Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there
is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second
creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other
people's agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits. - Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People
surrounds the beginning of a profound relationship suggests an intentionality
far beyond the ken of the people involved. - Soul Mates
"People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The
key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are
about, and what you value." - Stephen R. Covey
"Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living... it taught me that pain
has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health
or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain
and loss are great enhancers." - Lance Armstrong
"Leaders are people we as followers want to regard with awe as the fullest
flowering of our own possibilities." - Gail Sheehy
"They must find it difficult... those who have taken authority as the truth,
rather than truth as the authority." - Gerald Massey

Hepatitis-C control
According to a report published in a local English daily, over seven
million Hepatitis-C patients may be left without any treatment under the Prime
Minister's National Programme for the Control and Prevention of Hepatitis.
Hepatitis-C patients, who do not avail the prime minister's programme, have to
spend about Rs 50,000 for a six-month treatment course, while private hospitals
charge far more. However, under the prime minister's project the treatment is
brought down to between Rs 16,000-20,000. Nearly five to six percent of the
population is infected with Hepatitis-C, indicating that there are currently
about 7.5 million Hepatitis-C patients in the country. Between three and four
percent population is infected with Hepatitis-B. Around 16 million Pakistanis
are currently infected with Hepatitis-B and C, with the latter being more
prevalent in Punjab. A comprehensive survey is yet to be conducted, although the
Ministry of Health is finalising a viral Hepatitis-B and C prevalence survey
which will depict the representative disease burden in provinces. With the
programme's funding approved until 2010, the figures show that even the numbers
of patients registered under the programme are a mere drop in the ocean given
the likely scale of the problem - nearly 34,000 Hepatitis-C patients have been
registered across the country, of which over 10,000 patients are yet to receive
treatment.
Chronic Hepatitis-C can cause cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer.
Researchers estimate that at least 20 percent of patients with chronic hepatitis
C develop cirrhosis, a process that takes at least 10 to 20 years. After 20 to
40 years, a small percentage of patients develop liver cancer. Hepatitis C is
the cause of about half of cases of primary liver cancer in the developed world.
Men, alcoholics, patients with cirrhosis, people over age 40 and those infected
for 20 to 40 years are at higher risk of developing HCV-related liver cancer. It
is a sad state of affairs that only 0.5 percent of the GDP in Pakistan is spent
on health, thereby depriving most of the populace of basic healthcare
facilities. This proves that the health sector is not on the priority list of
our government as compared to developed countries. Pakistan lacks in both
quality of healthcare and number of specialised hospitals of international
standards. Under these circumstances, the patients prefer to visit private
hospitals instead of public hospitals. The local healthcare facilities are not
equipped to provide good medical care to any patient.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in his first speech spelled out his
priorities for the 100-day programme. This was, no doubt, a welcoming measure,
but he should have also given some preference to the health sector. In regard to
Hepatitis-C and other diseases, the solution lies in giving priority to the
health sector, otherwise the slogan 'health for all' will remain a dream forever
in Pakistan. At the same time, diagnosis and treatment of Hepatitis-C patients
should be given more importance. The fact is that due to lack of health
facilities the treatment of thousands of patients had to be stopped mid-way. If
the government is serious about providing health facilities to the masses, it
should allocate more budget to the health sector. The local healthcare
facilities, be they public or private, should be up to the international
standards and assurances must be given that no malpractices would take place.
Corruption is very common in the health sector, including sale of public sector
hospital medicines at drug stores. Unless this pilferage is stopped, it is not
possible to achieve the desired goals vis-à-vis public health in Pakistan.
http://thepost.com.pk/EditorialNews.aspx?dtlid=158262&catid=10

State Board Files Complaints Against 2 Doc in Hep C Case
The State Board of Medical Examiners has filed complaints against two doctors
linked to the hepatitis C outbreak.
Disciplinary complaints have been filed against the owner of the Endoscopy
Center of Southern Nevada, Dr. Dipak Desai and Dr. Eladio Carrera.
Carrera worked at the clinics.
The state attorney general also filed a motion in court to prevent the doctors
from practicing until they can resolve the complaints.
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/global/story.asp?s=8240770

May is Hepatitis C month
Sudbury has over 2,250 people infected with Hepatitis C. There is no vaccine and
for some there is no cure.
Some people think that the Hepatitis A and B vaccine will protect them from the
Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Some people think that Hepatitis C is only a drug
problem. This simply is not true. About 20% of the people infected with HCV in
Sudbury either tried street drugs only once in their life or may still using
street drugs. The other 80 % contracted Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion
or by sharing personal hygiene products with others that were infected and
didn't know it. Some don't know how they were infected or when.
If the public knows the ways of contracting Hepatitis C they can prevent it. May
is Hepatitis C month in Canada. Our Greater Sudbury Mayor John Rodriguez will be
proclaiming May as Hepatitis C month in Sudbury on April 30th at 10: AM at 200
Brady Street Sudbury Ontario Mayor's office on the 4th floor.
Mayor John Rodriguez will be inviting the public to enter the Break the Silence
and Win Contest. As Hepatitis C is preventable and a Silent Epidemic the Circle
C Support Group (Sudbury On) is conducting this contest to promote awareness,
education and prevention.
Our goal is to get the public to learn the ways they can contract Hepatitis C
and talk to friends and family members about it. You may not be infected but we
are all affected. Hepatitis C Does Not Discriminate. We are all at RISK. On May
23rd a FREE public barbecue will be held at Tom Davies Square court yard from
4-PM to 8:PM. All are welcome to attend this FREE barbecue sponsored by the
Circle C Support Group (Sudbury On)
Ernie Zivny
Circle C Support Group (Sudbury On)
705-522-5156
http://www.thesudburystar.com/Blogs/ViewCommunityPage.aspx?BlogID=1292

Medical marijuana patients face transplant hurdles
By GENE JOHNSON
Timothy Garon's face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up
in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant. His
liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell
him, he will be dead in days. But Garon's been refused a spot on the transplant
list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved
for medical reasons.
"I'm not angry, I'm not mad, I'm just confused," said Garon, lying in his
hospital bed a few minutes after a doctor told him the hospital transplant
committee's decision Thursday.
With the scarcity of donated organs, transplant committees like the one at the
University of Washington Medical Center use tough standards, including whether
the candidate has other serious health problems or is likely to drink or do
drugs.
And with cases like Garon's, they also have to consider _ as a dozen states now
have medical marijuana laws _ if using dope with a doctor's blessing should be
held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.
Most transplant centers struggle with the how to deal with people who have used
marijuana, said Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute of Human Values in
Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina.
"Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is however a
concern ... in that it's a potential indicator of an addictive personality,"
Sade said.
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation's
transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for
transplant candidates.
At some, people who use "illicit substances" _ including medical marijuana, even
in states that allow it _ are automatically rejected. At others, such as the
UCLA Medical Center, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean
for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.
Garon believes he got hepatitis by sharing needles with "speed freaks" as a
teenager. In recent years, he said, pot has been the only drug he's used. In
December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.
Garon, who has been hospitalized or in hospice care for two months straight,
said he turned to the university hospital after Seattle's Harborview Medical
Center told him he needed six months of abstinence.
The university also denied him, but said it would reconsider if he enrolled in a
60-day drug-treatment program. This week, at the urging of Garon's lawyer, the
university's transplant team reconsidered anyway, but it stuck to its decision.
Dr. Brad Roter, the Seattle physician who authorized Garon's pot use for nausea,
abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be
such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.
That's typically the case, said Peggy Stewart, a clinical social worker on the
liver transplant team at UCLA who has researched the issue. "There needs to be
some kind of national eligibility criteria," she said.
The patients "are trusting their physician to do the right thing. The physician
prescribes marijuana, they take the marijuana, and they are shocked that this is
now the end result," she said.
No one tracks how many patients are denied transplants over medical marijuana
use.
Pro-marijuana groups have cited a handful of cases, including at least two
patient deaths, in Oregon and California, since the mid-to-late 1990s, when
states began adopting medical marijuana laws.
Many doctors agree that using marijuana _ smoking it, especially _ is out of the
question post-transplant.
The drugs patients take to help their bodies accept a new organ increase the
risk of aspergillosis, a frequently fatal infection caused by a common mold
found in marijuana and tobacco.
But there's little information on whether using marijuana is a problem before
the transplant, said Dr. Emily Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist who
works with transplant patients at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.
Further complicating matters, Blumberg said, is that some insurers require proof
of abstinence, such as drug tests, before they'll agree to pay for transplants.
Dr. Jorge Reyes, a liver transplant surgeon at the UW Medical Center, said that
while medical marijuana use isn't in itself a sign of substance abuse, it must
be evaluated in the context of each patient.
"The concern is that patients who have been using it will not be able to stop,"
Reyes said.
Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for the California chapter of NORML, the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, scoffed at that notion.
"Everyone agrees that marijuana is the least habit-forming of all the
recreational drugs, including alcohol," Gieringer said. "And unlike a lot of
prescription medications, it's nontoxic to the liver."
Reyes and other UW officials declined to discuss Garon's case.
But Reyes said that in addition to medical concerns, transplant committees _
which often include surgeons, social workers, and nutritionists _ must evaluate
whether patients have the support and psychiatric health to cope with a complex
post-operative regimen for the rest of their lives.
Garon, the lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover-band, remains charged
with manufacturing weed. He insists he was following the state law, which limits
patients to a "60-day supply" but doesn't define that amount.
"He's just a fantastic musician, and he's a great guy," said his girlfriend,
Liesa Bueno. "I wish there was something we could do legally. ... I'm going to
miss him terribly if he passes."
___
On the Net:
United Nework for Organ Sharing: http://www.unos.org
Garon performing his song "Goodbye Baby":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?vUJDihYn_fJA
http://fredericksburg.com/News/apmethods/apstory?urlfeed=D909O2500.xml

Roche's R1626, First-in-Class Hepatitis C Polymerase Inhibitor, Demonstrates
Impressive End-of-Treatment Response in Phase IIa Study
BASEL, Switzerland, April 26 /PRNewswire/ --
- R1626 Also Shows a High Barrier to the Development of Resistance
Roche's investigational treatment for hepatitis C, R1626, has shown an
impressive end-of-treatment response rate when given in combination with
PEGASYS(R) (peginterferon alfa-2a) and COPEGUS(R) (ribavirin).
After 4 weeks of treatment with this triple combination, followed by 44
weeks of Pegasys and Copegus, levels of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) were
undetectable in 84% of patients infected with genotype 1 virus. This was
higher than in patients treated with Pegasys and Copegus alone for the entire
48-week treatment period (65%).(1) These new data were presented in a
late-breaker oral session at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the European
Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), being held in Milan, Italy.
Discovered and developed at Roche, R1626 is a potent polymerase inhibitor
which belongs to a new generation of treatments that directly inhibit
replication of HCV. It is the most advanced polymerase inhibitor in
development.
"These results demonstrate that R1626 holds significant promise to
potentially increase the number of hepatitis C patients who can be
successfully treated. It is particularly interesting that R1626, a polymerase
inhibitor, is demonstrating a higher end-of-treatment response rate than
current HCV protease inhibitors in development, together with a high barrier
to the development of resistance," said Dr David Nelson, Director of
Hepatology and Liver Transplantation at the University of Florida,
Gainesville, Florida, USA. "Since most patients responded very early in
treatment with R1626, we expect excellent SVR rates that improve
significantly on those achieved with the current standard of care. I look
forward to SVR data from this Phase IIa study, and to results of the ongoing
Phase IIb study."
Patients in this Phase IIa study will be followed for an additional 24
weeks with no treatment to determine the rate of sustained virological
response (SVR), indicating a cure.
Rapid development of R1626 - a Large Phase IIb Study is Now Fully
Enrolled
A large Phase IIb study with R1626 was initiated in November 2007 to
define the optimal dose of R1626, in combination with Pegasys and Copegus.
This Phase IIb trial, called POLI 1, is now fully enrolled with approximately
500 patients.
More About the Phase IIa Study and End-of-Treatment Results Presented at
EASL
The Phase IIa study is a multicenter trial that enrolled 104 patients
with genotype 1 HCV, who had not previously received treatment. Its primary
endpoint was to evaluate the 4-week efficacy and safety of combining R1626
with Pegasys alone or with Pegasys plus Copegus, in comparison to a current
HCV standard of care, Pegasys plus Copegus.
Patients were randomised into the following treatment groups:
- Group A: R1626 1,500 mg twice a day plus Pegasys 180 mcg weekly for 4
weeks
- Group B: R1626 3,000 mg twice a day plus Pegasys 180 mcg weekly for 4
weeks
- Group C: R1626 1,500 mg twice a day plus Pegasys 180 mcg weekly plus
Copegus 1,000/1,200 mg daily for 4 weeks
- Group D (standard of care group): Pegasys 180 mcg weekly plus Copegus
1,000/1,200 mg daily for 4 weeks
Following the 4 weeks of treatment in this study, all patients received
Pegasys 180 mcg weekly plus Copegus 1,000/1,200 mg daily for an additional 44
weeks to complete the 48-week trial.
The study found(1):
- Data collected at 4 weeks showed that patients receiving the
triple combination (Group C) had a mean decrease in viral load of 5.2
log10 from baseline, indicating a robust and rapid virological response
- At week 48, HCV was undetectable in 84% of patients receiving the
triple combination R1626 1,500 mg BID + Pegasys + Copegus, compared with
65% of patients treated with Pegasys and Copegus alone
- A higher incidence of grade 4 neutropaenia was reported in the
R1626 treatment arms during the 4-week treatment period; however, after
stopping treatment with R1626, absolute neutrophil counts returned to the
levels typically seen with patients taking standard of care alone
R1626 - a High Barrier to the Development of Resistance
In a separate oral presentation at EASL, it was reported that R1626
continues to present a high barrier to the development of viral resistance.
Resistance is a serious concern in hepatitis C treatment, as resistant
viruses have emerged in patients early on in treatment with protease
inhibitors. Resistance to R1626 has not been yet been identified, after
either 2 weeks of R1626 monotherapy, or after 4 weeks in patients treated
with R1626 in combination therapy.(2)
About Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C, the most common chronic blood-borne infection, is
transmitted primarily through blood or blood products. Hepatitis C
chronically infects 180 million people worldwide, with an additional three to
four million people newly infected each year.(3) It is a leading cause of
cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure, despite being potentially curable.
The future of hepatitis C therapy is likely to involve combinations of new
small-molecule antiviral drugs and pegylated interferon-based treatment, such
as Pegasys.
About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading
research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and
diagnostics. As the world's biggest biotech company and an innovator of
products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis and
treatment of diseases, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts to
improving people's health and quality of life. Roche is the world leader in
in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer and transplantation, a market
leader in virology and active in other major therapeutic areas such as
autoimmune diseases, inflammation, metabolic disorders and diseases of the
central nervous system. In 2007 sales by the Pharmaceuticals Division
totalled 36.8 billion Swiss francs, and the Diagnostics Division posted sales
of 9.3 billion Swiss francs. Roche has R&D agreements and strategic alliances
with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech
and Chugai, and invested over 8 billion Swiss francs in R&D in 2007.
Worldwide, the Group employs about 79,000 people. Additional information is
available on the Internet at http://www.roche.com.
All trademarks used or mentioned in this release are protected by law.
References:
(1). Nelson D, Pockros P, Godofsky E, et al. 84% end-of-treatment
response (EOTR, week 48) achieved with R1626, peginterferon alfa 2a (40KD)
and ribavirin for 4 weeks followed by the standard of care: Results of a
phase 2a study in treatment-naive HCV genotype 1 patients. In: 43rd Annual
Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL); 2008
April 26, 2008; Milan, Italy; 2008.
(2). Le Pogam S, Seshaadri A, Kang H, et al. Low level of resistance, low
viral fitness and absence of resistance mutations in baseline quasispecies
may contribute to high barrier to R1626 resistance in vivo. In: 43rd Annual
Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL); 2008;
Milan, Italy; 2008.
(3). World Health Organization. Initiative for Vaccine Research, Viral
Cancers, Hepatitis C. 2006. (Accessed July 24, 2006, at
http://www.who.int/vaccine_research/diseases/viral_cancers/en/index2.html.)
Roche
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/roches-r1626-first-in-class-hepatitis-c,\
368052.shtml

Anderson's Hepatitis no longer a problem
Pamela Anderson is making strong progress in her battle against Hepatitis C -
her doctor has declared her fitter and healthier at 40 than she's ever been in
her life.
In 2003, Anderson claimed she was not expected to live for more than 10 or 15
years after contracting the disease from ex-husband Tommy Lee - but last October
the former Baywatch star announced her determination to defy all odds and cure
the virus completely.
And now the actress is in the best health of her life, she is convinced she has
finally managed to stave off the illness.
Speaking to Larry King on Friday, Anderson says, "I'm doing really good.
Actually, I just went to my doctor, Dr. Huizenga. He took all my blood work and
went through all my tests. And I hadn't really been to him in a year-and-a-half.
And he said he's never seen me healthier."
"That, he said, it's a miracle. You know, I don't really work out a lot. I walk
and play sports with my kids. But he says, 'You're in the best shape I've ever
seen you in. You're 40 years old and your liver is in great shape, all your
blood work came back really well, low cholesterol.'"
Anderson went on to credit her all-natural lifestyle for her good health:
"I'm... treating it homeopathically... But I'm doing really what he (the doctor)
told me... He thinks that me being vegetarian really helps me staying in such
good shape."
http://www.kmtr.com/entertainment/story.aspx?content_id=d0c6072e-b040-40e7-86f9-\
58639238e43a&rss=197

hepatitis C and liver disease-- women's issues, Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BCloqJXnRE
Dr. Melissa Palmer
hepatitis C-- women's issues; side effects from hcv therapy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlFjRKgXYn8&feature=related
managing pbc (primary biliary cirrhosis); liver disease
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsmJBZUe-FI&feature=related

Viral Hepatitis issue of Greece meeting and liver patient group meeting are
online [18]
The Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board web site has been updated.
1) Viral Hepatitis Issue Vol 16 n 2, prepared from material presented at the
November 2007 VHPB meeting "Prevention and control of viral hepatitis in Greece:
Lessons learnt and the way forward" is online.
This issue reviews the organization of healthcare system, the epidemiological
situation, surveillance system, research activities, and current prevention and
control measures of viral hepatitis in Greece
2) Materials of the March 2008 VHPB-ELPA meeting "Prevention and control of
viral hepatitis: The role and impact of patient and advocacy groups in and
outside Europe" are available.
The meeting program, the pre-meeting document and most presentations of this
meeting can be accessed.
You can easily access these updates via the VHPB news page:
http://www.vhpb.org

Edward Lawrence, Reporter
Woman Shares Fears After Receiving Hep C Warning Letter
The additional people being notified will feel the same emotions as the 40,000
alerted at the end of February. Eyewitness News talked with one woman who says
the notification threw her life into chaos.
The woman received a letter from the Southern Nevada Health District on Feb. 27.
She says the letter changed her life forever -- and not in a good way.
"I was totally terrified. I mean, because they want to test you not only for
hepatitis, but for HIV," said the woman.
This woman did not want us to use her name or show her face. She had a procedure
at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada in March of 2006. Two years later,
the letter shows up from the health district. Now she has tested positive for
hepatitis B.
"I got tested right away. I had to call my doctor and to tell you the truth, I
have had to have my doctor give me something to calm me down," she said.
She is sure the disease came from the procedure at the center on Shadow Lane.
She's religious, from Utah, and moved to Las Vegas two decades ago with her
husband of 32 years.
"We are low risk people. We don't do any weird things. I have never had a
tattoo, you know," she said.
She feels for the additional 10,000 people who may have just learned they could
have hepatitis and HIV due to unsafe medical practices. Wednesday, she bought
three books on hepatitis B to educate herself. It's something she never imagined
could happen, especially at a surgical center.
Asked if this has shaken her confidence in doctors now, the woman replies,
"Absolutely. I don't even. Just when I had to get my blood test -- do I want
these people sticking this needle in my arm?"
She says she may never get over her new fear of doctors but knows she needs them
more than ever to help manage her new disease. She wants to make sure that
anyone who received the letter gets tested for hepatitis and HIV and follows up
with their doctor.
She also says make sure to ask for your records to be sent to the health
district as part of this investigation.
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=8224042&nav=menu102_2

Why the World Should Ask 'Am I Number 12?'
Thursday April 24, 8:15 am ET
GENEVA, Switzerland, April 24 /PRNewswire/ --
- More Than 200 Patient Groups Launch Global Viral Campaign
- http://www.aminumber12.org - http://www.suis-jelenumero12.org -
http://www.souonumero12.org - http://www.sonoioilnumero12.org -
http://www.soyelnumero12.org - http://www.rakam12.org -
The World Hepatitis Alliance and over 200 patient groups around the world are
asking 'Am I Number 12?' (http://www.aminumber12.org) to increase awareness of
the shocking statistic that one in 12 people on the planet are living with
hepatitis B or hepatitis C and yet the majority of those infected are unaware.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080424/302168-a )
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080424/302168-b )
Three weeks ahead of World Hepatitis Day on Monday 19 May, the World Hepatitis
Alliance is launching a viral campaign aimed at getting people talking about the
fact that approximately 500 million people globally are living with either
hepatitis B or C. The World Hepatitis Alliance is asking people to sign-up to
http://www.aminumber12.org to show support for the campaign but also to receive
valuable information about a disease that kills some 1.5 million people a year.
The 'Am I Number 12?' campaign has already kicked off in 64 countries and
high-profile campaigns are being coordinated from Sydney to Serbia and from
Beijing to Buenos Aires. Charles Gore, President of the World Hepatitis
Alliance, said that with 1.5 million people dying every year, chronic viral
hepatitis could no longer be ignored. "Through the 'Am I Number 12?' campaign
and activities around the world on 19 May we aim to put hepatitis B and C firmly
on the global healthcare agenda," Mr Gore said.
Mr Gore continued that unlike other disease areas, awareness of hepatitis B and
C remains inexplicably low: "We believe that, unless awareness improves, we
won't make any progress in reducing the enormous and largely preventable death
toll. Hepatitis B and hepatitis C should have the same profile as HIV/AIDS,
malaria and TB and should really be up there alongside those diseases in the
WHO's millennium goals."
Did You Know?
- 500 million people worldwide are currently infected with
hepatitis B or C
- This is over 10 times the number infected with HIV/AIDS
- Between them, hepatitis B and C kill 1.5 million people a year
- One in every three people on the planet has been exposed to
either or both viruses
- Most of the 500 million infected do not know
World Hepatitis Day
World Hepatitis Day will be observed on Monday 19 May and marks a brand new,
entirely patient-led initiative. The day has been launched in response to the
concern that chronic viral hepatitis has nowhere near the level of awareness nor
the political will to tackle it that is seen in HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. This
is despite the fact that the numbers chronically infected with, and annually
killed by, hepatitis B and C viruses are on the same scale. 'Am I Number 12?'
campaign materials are available in over 40 languages - for logo images,
postcards, posters and banner ads please contact the World Hepatitis Alliance at
worldhepday@...
World Hepatitis Alliance
World Hepatitis Day is being coordinated by the World Hepatitis Alliance, a
newly established Non-Governmental Organisation which represents more than 200
hepatitis B and hepatitis C patient groups from around the world. The World
Hepatitis Alliance is governed by a representative board of patient groups from
seven world regions: Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, North America,
South America, Australasia & Western Pacific. For more information visit
http://www.worldhepatitisday.com on Monday 19 May.
Contact Information:
International - Lorna Croft,
T: +44-20-7395-7067,
E: worldhepday@... .

Click on this link to hear Kelly Z in Texas!
http://www.wfaa.com/video/?z=y&nvid=237830&shu=1
Many of you have seen the name KELLY Z and know her as a musician and a huge
Hepatitis C advocate. Her website for the postcards and to become a street
team member is:
www.hepcaware.org
Her My Space sites are:
www.myspace.com/kellyslot (Music)
www.myspace.com/hepcaware (Hepatitis Education)
and http://www.myspace.com/hepc
Please check them out!
THANK YOU KELLY Z FOR ALL YOU DO FOR US!!
Peace
Pam Langford
H.E.A.L.S of the South
Hepatitis Education Awareness and Liver Support
PO Box 180813
Tallahassee, FL 32318
www.HEALSoftheSouth.org
www.HEALSoftheSouth.com
www.myspace.com/figmento
"Am I Number 12?"
Get Tested for Hepatitis C. Get Vaccinated for Hepatitis A and B.
~~~~~
Come to the Capital on May 19th and find out what number 12 means.
Mahatma Gandhi put it well: "Be the change you want to see in the
world." It always begins with one person

Willie Nelson's 75th Birthday April 30th KGSR 107.1 fm
Jody Denberg is hosting a Birthday Party for Willie Nelson in celebration of his
75th Birthday.
KGSR 107.1 fm
April 30 2008 8p.m.
With Paula Nelson , Bobby Whitlock & CoCo Carmel , Ray Benson , Charlie Sexton ,
Stephen Bruton and more ...

Many Physicians Do Not Use E-mail To Communicate With Patients
AP/Long Island Newsday on Tuesday examined how although U.S. patients
increasingly "want the convenience of e-mail" to communicate with physicians,
many physicians do not use the technology for that purpose.
A survey conducted last year by Manhattan Research found that only 31% of
physicians in the first quarter of 2007 used e-mail to communicate with their
patients. According to AP/Newsday, some physicians have raised concerns
regarding using e-mail to communicate with their patients, including a
potentially larger workload, compromised patient privacy, fear of lawsuits and
receiving urgent messages that they are unable to answer promptly.
In addition, most insurance companies do not reimburse physicians for consulting
with patients via e-mail. However, many patients have said they can avoid "phone
tag" with a physician or taking time off for work for an office visit by using
e-mail for "routine matters," including asking for a prescription refill,
receiving laboratory results or scheduling an appointment, AP/Newsday reports.
The American Medical Association has recommended that physicians avoid use of
e-mail as a substitute for in-office patient visits and inform their patients
about its limitations.
E-mail Advantages
According to AP/Newsday, most studies regarding e-mail communication with
physicians have found that patients do not "abuse" e-mail by overwhelming
physicians with "rambling messages." In addition, the studies have found that
e-mail communication can help physicians' productivity and reduce patient office
visits. Health insurers Cigna and Aetna in 2008 have expanded pilot programs in
which participating physicians are compensated for "virtual house calls" via a
secure Web site that includes e-mail capabilities, AP/Newsday reports.
Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project said, "People are able
to file their taxes online, buy and sell household goods, and manage their
financial accounts," adding, "The health care industry seems to be lagging
behind other industries" (Chang, AP/Long Island Newsday, 4/22).
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=51735

Is it time to give up the search for an Aids vaccine?
After 25 years and billions of pounds, leading scientists are now forced to ask
this question
By Steve Connor and Chris Green
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Most scientists involved in Aids research believe that a vaccine against HIV is
further away than ever and some have admitted that effective immunisation
against the virus may never be possible, according to an unprecedented poll
conducted by The Independent.
A mood of deep pessimism has spread among the international community of Aids
scientists after the failure of a trial of a promising vaccine at the end of
last year. It just was the latest in a series of setbacks in the 25-year
struggle to develop an HIV vaccine.
The Independent's survey of more than 35 leading Aids scientists in Britain and
the United States found that just two were now more optimistic about the
prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were
more optimistic now than they were five years ago.
Nearly two thirds believed that an HIV vaccine will not be developed within the
next 10 years and some of them said that it may take at least 20 more years of
research before a vaccine can be used to protect people either from infection or
the onset of Aids.
A substantial minority of the scientists admitted that an HIV vaccine may never
be developed, and even those who believe that one could appear within the next
10 years added caveats saying that such a vaccine would be unlikely to work as a
truly effective prophylactic against infection by the virus.
One of the major conclusions to emerge from the failed clinical trial of the
most promising prototype vaccine, manufactured by the drug company Merck, was
that an important animal model used for more than a decade, testing HIV vaccines
on monkeys before they are used on humans, does not in fact work.
This has meant that prototype HIV vaccines which appear to work well when tested
on monkeys infected with an artificial virus do not work when tested on human
volunteers at risk of HIV - a finding that will be exploited by
anti-vivisectionist campaigners opposed to vaccine experiments on primates.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID), near Washington, told The Independent that the
animal model - which uses genetically engineered simian and human
immunodeficiency viruses in a combination, known as SHIV - failed to predict
what will happen when a prototype vaccine is moved from laboratory monkeys to
people. "We've learnt a few important things [from the clinical trial]. We've
learnt that one of the animal models, the SHIV model, really doesn't predict
very well at all," he said.
"At least we now know that you can get a situation where it looks like you are
protecting against SHIV and you're not protecting at all in the human model -
that's important," he said.
The NIAID spends about $500m (£250m) on HIV vaccine research each year and
despite calls from some Aids pressure groups for funds to be diverted to other
forms of Aids prevention, Dr Fauci said this was not the time to stop vaccine
research. "I don't think you should say that this is the point where we're going
to give up on developing a vaccine. I think you continue given that there are so
many unanswered questions to answer," he said. "There is an impression given by
some that if you do vaccine research you are neglecting other areas of
prevention. That's not the case. We should and we are doing them
simultaneously."
More than 80 per cent of the scientists who took part in our survey agreed that
it was now important to change the direction of HIV vaccine research, given the
failure of the Merck clinical trial, which was cancelled when it emerged that
the vaccine may have actually increased the chances of people developing Aids.
Robert Gallo, a prominent Aids researcher in the US who is credited with
co-discovering the virus in the early 1980s, likened the vaccine's failure to
the Challenger disaster, which forced Nasa to ground the space shuttle fleet for
years.
At the end of last month, Dr Fauci convened a high-level summit of leading HIV
specialists at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, to discuss the future direction of
research. A group of 14 prominent Aids specialists had already written to Dr
Fauci suggesting that his institute had "lost its way" in terms of an HIV
vaccine.
He said that one outcome of the meeting was a refocusing of the vaccine effort
away from expensive clinical trials towards more fundamental research to
understand the basic biology of the virus and its effects on the human immune
system.
"We'll be turning the knob more towards answering some fundamental questions
rather than going into big clinical trials," Dr Fauci said. "I'm certainly
disappointed that we're not further ahead in the development of a vaccine but I
don't say that this year I'm more discouraged than I was last year. I always
knew from the beginning that it would be a very difficult task given what we
know about this very elusive virus."
About 33 million people in the world are infected with HIV and some 26 million
have died of Aids since the pandemic began.
The majority of scientists who responded to The Independent's survey said that a
vaccine would be the most effective way of preventing the spread of the virus
given the failure of many education programmes.
Winnie Sseruma, 46: 'For me, the key has been not to give up'
Ms Sseruma says she believes abandoning research for a vaccine would mean a loss
of hope for millions of people. "When I was diagnosed, nearly 20 years ago, it
was when the first drugs had come on the market. A lot of people had said before
then that there was no hope and that all efforts should be put into prevention.
But look where we are now. We cannot lose hope; we need to invest in a vaccine."
She says this latest failure needs to be seen as the first hurdle, not a signal
to give up. "Yes, the scientists have not been very successful in their quest
for a vaccine, but you can learn a lot from failures. Now they have realised
they cannot use the normal routes used to develope simpler vaccines."
Ms Sseruma lives in London, but was born in Uganda and says that the current
climate of pessimism for the vaccine is not dissimilar to the initial doubts
over the likelihood of treating HIV in Africa.
"I remember when treatment started being available in the West and people were
saying it would be impossible to send it to Africa. But look what's happened. We
should always do whatever is humanly possible to fight Aids. It's been a long
journey, but for me, the key has been not to give up, and the scientists need to
have the same attitude."
'Philippe B', 42: 'People are getting resistant to drugs'
"Philippe", who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered he was HIV positive 11
years ago. The 42-year-old believes the search for the vaccination should no
longer be a priority, but that it should not stop altogether.
"Unfortunately what's happening now is that people are getting more resistant to
drug treatment, and more money needs to be put into finding more drugs for
treatment," he said.
For people like Philippe, the fear of building an immunity to drugs and running
out of options is a real one. He believes that as long as scientists are still
pessimistic about the chances of successfully finding a vaccine, money needs to
be invested in continuing to fund research into treatment.
"I've already become resistant to five combination treatments over the last ten
years, and if I was on the last one available I'd be very afraid. HIV is not a
death sentence in the way it once was, but we do need to fund further research
into the drugs that treat it."
Nevertheless, Philippe thinks it is not yet time to abandon all research into a
vaccine. "In my lifetime I don't think we'll have a vaccine, but there's no
reason we should believe it isn't possible," he said. "But we should now be
spending more on other ways of dealing with the disease."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-it-time-to-give-up-the-search-for-a\
n-aids-vaccine-814737.html

http://abcnews.go.com/gma/lastlecture
The Last Lecture: A Love Story for Your Life
Diane Sawyer Talks to Randy Pausch and His Family Seven Months After Inspiring
Lecture
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4614281&page=1

Romark Announces Presentation Of New Data For Nitazoxanide In Chronic Hepatitis
C At EASL 2008
Romark Laboratories, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, announced that
data from studies of nitazoxanide in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection
are being communicated in four presentations made at the 43rd Annual Meeting of
the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), held in Milan, Italy
this week.
"These new studies confirm earlier data suggesting synergistic activity between
nitazoxanide and peginterferon in genotype 4 patients and provide a first look
at sustained virologic response in a limited number of genotype 1 patients,"
said Jean-Francois Rossignol, M.D., Director of the Romark Institute for Medical
Research and discoverer of nitazoxanide. "These data also provide interesting
insights into the mechanism of action of nitazoxanide and confirm previous
findings related to its safety."
The four presentations include:
-- An oral presentation, titled, "Randomized Controlled Trial of
Nitazoxanide-Peginterferon-Ribavirin, Nitazoxanide-Peginterferon and
Peginterferon-Ribavirin in the Treatment of Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C
Genotype 4," reported final 24-week post-treatment sustained virologic response
(SVR) rates for the company's STEALTH C-1 trial.
In the trial, 96 treatment-naive patients with chronic hepatitis C genotype 4
were randomized into three groups to receive either 48 weeks of standard of care
(SOC) treatment (n=40), 12 weeks of nitazoxanide followed by 36 weeks of
nitazoxanide plus peginterferon (a dual regimen, n=28), or 12 weeks of
nitazoxanide followed by 36 weeks of nitazoxanide plus SOC with peginterferon
plus ribavirin (a triple regimen, n=28). An additional 24 interferon-experienced
patients were randomized to receive 12 weeks of nitazoxanide followed by either
the dual regimen (n=12) or the triple regimen (n=12) for 36 weeks. Patients
received peginterferon alfa-2a (Pegasys(R), Hoffman LaRoche) 180 micrograms once
per week; nitazoxanide was administered as one 500 mg tablet twice daily; and
ribavirin (Copegus(R), Hoffman LaRoche) was administered as 1,000 or 1,200 mg
daily according to body weight. Analysis of data was by intention to treat.
In treatment-naive patients, combination therapy with nitazoxanide plus SOC
resulted in a SVR24 rate of 79%, compared with 50% for those treated with SOC
without nitazoxanide (P=0.023). When nitazoxanide was combined with
peginterferon alone, the observed SVR24 rate in this group was 61%. In 24
treatment-experienced patients, the addition of nitazoxanide to SOC for 36 weeks
resulted in a 25% rate of SVR, compared with 8% when nitazoxanide was combined
with peginterferon alone. The patients treated with nitazoxanide experienced no
more side effects than patients who received the SOC.
Interim results of this trial were presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of the
American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) in Boston, MA.(1)
-- A poster presentation, titled "Evaluation of a 4-week Lead-in Phase With
Nitazoxanide Prior to Nitazoxanide+Peginterferon in Treating Chronic Hepatitis
C," demonstrated that reducing a nitazoxanide lead-in phase from 12 to 4 weeks,
followed by the addition of SOC therapy, does not compromise virologic response
rates in a patient population with different genotypes, predominately genotype
4.
Replicon studies and an early clinical experience (unpublished) indicated that
treatment with nitazoxanide alone prior to adding interferon potentiates the
activity of combination therapy with nitazoxanide plus peginterferon. The
STEALTH C-1(2) trial used 12 weeks of lead-in therapy with nitazoxanide alone.
This clinical study was designed to evaluate the effect of reducing the lead-in
phase from 12 weeks to 4 weeks.
In this Phase II study, 44 patients (40 with HCV genotype 4; 3 with HCV genotype
1; and 1 with HCV genotype 2) received 4 weeks of nitazoxanide 500 mg twice
daily followed by Pegasys(R) (peginterferon alfa-2a) and nitazoxanide for 36
weeks. Romark's STEALTH C-1 trial (see description above) was used as an
historical control, where randomized patients were treated for 12 weeks with
nitazoxanide before adding SOC treatment. Analysis of data was by intention to
treat.
Thirty-five of 44 patients (80%) treated with a 4-week lead-in phase of
nitazoxanide followed by the addition of peginterferon for 36 weeks experienced
a SVR 12 weeks after the end of treatment (SVR12) compared to 50% in the SOC
historical control group (P = 0.004), 61% in patients receiving a 12-week
lead-in with nitazoxanide followed by 36 weeks of nitazoxanide plus
peginterferon, and 79% in patients receiving a 12- week lead-in with
nitazoxanide followed by 36 weeks of nitazoxanide plus SOC.
Of the 44 patients in the study, 78% (n=40) of patients with HCV genotype 4,
100% (n=3) of patients with HCV genotype 1, and 100% (n=1) of HCV genotype 2,
had undetectable virus at 12 weeks following end of treatment.
Adverse events reported for these 44 patients were similar to those reported in
the STEALTH C-1 trial. Patients treated with nitazoxanide experienced no more
side effects than patients who received the SOC therapy. Only one of the 44
patients discontinued therapy due to noncompliance. There were no serious
adverse events or discontinuations due to adverse events.
"These data show that the nitazoxanide lead-in phase prior to standard of care
treatment can be reduced from 12 to 4 weeks with no apparent impact on virologic
response rates," said Jean-Francois Rossignol, M.D., Director of the Romark
Institute for Medical Research and lead author of the study.
-- Data from a poster presentation, "Randomized, Double-Blind Placebo-
Controlled Trial of Nitazoxanide in the Treatment of Patients with Chronic
Hepatitis C Genotype 4" showed that nitazoxanide monotherapy for 24 weeks did
not produce adverse events significantly different from that of a placebo and
suggest that monotherapy with nitazoxanide may be effective in achieving SVR in
a limited subset of patients with low viral load.
In this randomized, controlled study, 50 treatment-naïve patients with chronic
hepatitis C genotype 4 were randomized to receive one nitazoxanide 500 mg tablet
or a matching placebo tablet twice daily for 24 weeks. Baseline viral loads and
other disease characteristics were similar between groups. Seven of 23 patients
(34%) receiving nitazoxanide monotherapy achieved undetectable serum HCV RNA
after 24 weeks of therapy, compared with 0 of 24 patients receiving placebo
(P=0.004). Four of these 7 treatment responders (4/23, or 17%) had a SVR 24
weeks after completion of therapy. Patients not achieving undetectable HCV RNA
did not show significant reductions in viral load or alanine aminotransferase
(ALT) levels. Patients responding to nitazoxanide treatment had lower viral
loads at baseline. Adverse events were typically mild to moderate and occurred
with similar frequency and severity between the nitazoxanide and placebo groups.
"The study demonstrated the safety of long-term nitazoxanide exposure in
patients with chronic hepatitis C. Importantly, this data suggests that
thiazolides have an interferon-like mechanism and as a class may have a role as
single agent therapy in some patients," said Dr. Emmet Keeffe, chief medical
officer for Romark and co-author of the study.
-- An oral presentation by Brent Korba, Ph.D. of, Georgetown University Medical
Center, described preclinical studies showing that treatment of cells harboring
HCV replicons with nitazoxanide or its primary metabolite, tizoxanide, does not
induce viral mutations conferring resistance to nitazoxanide, tizoxanide,
interferon, ribavirin or 2'C- methyl cytidine (a polymerase inhibitor). The
presentation, titled, "Studies of the Potential for Resistance to Nitazoxanide
or Tizoxanide in HCV-Containing Replicon Cell Lines," also demonstrated that
treatment of HCV replicon cells with tizoxanide potentiates the antiviral effect
of subsequent treatment with interferon (8-fold decrease in concentration of
interferon required to inhibit virus replication by 90%).
"Data presented in each of these communications has provided important
information in guiding the ongoing clinical development of nitazoxanide," said
Dr. Rossignol.
Romark is currently enrolling patients for two U.S. clinical trials studying
nitazoxanide for the treatment of hepatitis C genotype 1. For more information
please visit please visit http://www.romarktrials.com or
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov and enter the search term "nitazoxanide hepatitis
United States."
About Nitazoxanide
Nitazoxanide belongs to a new class of small molecule cell signaling modulators
(CSMs) called the thiazolides. Like interferons, thiazolides modulate cell
signaling pathways involved in the host cell's innate defense against viruses.
Thiazolides can be administered orally and are not associated with side effects
commonly associated with use of interferon. Nitazoxanide was discovered by
Jean-Francois Rossignol, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Science Officer of
Romark, and was initially developed by Romark and approved for marketing in the
United States as a treatment of cryptosporidiosis.
About Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C is a blood-borne infectious disease that is caused by the hepatitis
C virus (HCV). It is the most common cause of chronic hepatitis in the U.S. and
may eventually lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure. The disease is
transmitted by contact with HCV-infected blood. A large majority of those
infected do not show symptoms, but fatigue, abdominal pain and nausea can be
common. The current standard treatment of care, peginterferon and ribavirin, is
effective in about half of all patients treated. According to the Centers for
Disease Control, HCV affects an estimated 4.1 million Americans.
About Romark Laboratories
Romark Laboratories (http://www.romark.com), a privately held biopharmaceutical
company, has discovered and developed a new class of small molecule antivirals
known as thiazolides. The Company is developing nitazoxanide, the first of the
thiazolide class, for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C, and is developing
other new thiazolides for treating viral diseases including chronic hepatitis B.
Alinia(R) (nitazoxanide) is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
and marketed by Romark for the treatment of Cryptosporidium and Giardia
infection.
REFERENCES:
(1) Interim Data from a Randomized Controlled Trial of Nitazoxanide-
Peginterferon-Ribavirin, Nitazoxanide-Peginterferon and Peginterferon- Ribavirin
in the treatment of Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Genotype 4, J. Rossignol
et. al.; Proceeds from the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Association for
the Study of Liver Disease 2007, Abstract #178 (presented November 6, 2007).
(2) Ibid.
Romark Laboratories
http://www.romark.com
View drug information on Alinia, Pegasys
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/105130.php

Medivir: First Data on TMC435350 in Patients with Hepatitis C Who Have Failed
Previous Treatment Shows Antiviral Activity
STOCKHOLM, Sweden--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:
Medivir (STO:MVIRB):
The data from a small explorative study will be presented tomorrow at the 43rd
Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) in
Milan, Italy. These are the first data to be presented on the use of TMC435350
in Hepatitis C patients. There will also be a poster presentation under the
title; "Once-daily regimens of the HCV NS3/4A-protease inhibitor TMC435350 are
predicted to provide therapeutic exposure in plasma and liver".
Medivir and Tibotec Pharmaceuticals Ltd discovered TMC435350 through a research
collaboration. TMC435350 is a potent inhibitor of the hepatitis C virus (HCV)
NS3/4A serine protease and is presently in a phase IIa proof-of-concept trial
(OPERA- 1) in Europe.
Data about the study
The objective of the phase Ia study was to evaluate, pharmacokinetics and safety
of TMC435350 in healthy volunteers and pharmacokinetics, safety and antiviral
activity in HCV infected patients in the following 1b study. The study included
52 healthy volunteers and 6 patients with HCV infection who were given
TMC435350.
Results from the phase Ib study
Five days dosing with 200 mg TMC435350 dosed once-daily resulted in a median
reduction of viral load of 3.9 log10 units/mL on day 6. Rapid decline in HCV
viral load was observed in all patients, both genotype 1a and 1b. There was no
viral breakthrough observed during dosing or in the following three days. At a
four week follow-up, plasma levels of HCV-RNA had returned to baseline in all
patients. Observed adverse events in patients and healthy volunteers were all
assessed as being mild and no serious adverse events were observed. There were
no study-medication related discontinuations.
Conclusion
TMC435350 was well tolerated during five days of dosing and exhibited strong and
rapid antiviral activity in HCV genotype 1 infected patients. The results of
this phase I trial in both healthy volunteers and patients with HCV infection
formed the basis for the ongoing phase IIa trial throughout Europe.
The poster to be presented at EASL could be found at www.medivir.com /Investor &
Media/Latest events
This information was brought to you by Cision http://newsroom.cision.com
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080\
424005585&newsLang=en

Some of you have never seen what I think is the *cute and cuddly* Hep C Virus.
Pictures don't come through on groups but you can see a pic here :-)
http://catdirtsez.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-you-give-someone-hepatitis.html

Intercell's Hepatitis C vaccine candidate wins World Vaccine Congress award
VIENNA (Thomson Financial) - Intercell AG's therapeutic Hepatitis C vaccine
candidate has been awarded the 'Vaccine Industry Excellence' award in the 'Best
New Therapeutic Vaccine' category by the World Vaccine Congress, the Austrian
group said in a press release. peter.klopf@... pkl/ak
http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=6674519&action=article

Bottled water causes Hepatitis A outbreak
By Ni Tao 2008-4-25
NATIONAL and local health authorities have confirmed that tainted bottled water
was the source of a recent outbreak of Hepatitis A that infected at least 330
people in Guiyang, capital city of Guizhou Province.
The "Zhuyuan" bottled water was blamed for the outbreak, said five experts from
the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, confirming a preliminary
report from the local health authority.
The water has been taken off store shelves.
The contagious disease, which hit Guiyang late last month, has "basically been
brought under control," according to Jing Xuxi, chief of the Health Bureau in
Guiyang.
Health officials on Wednesday lifted the emergency health state after the
epidemic was contained.
No human-to-human infections were reported.
As of April 22, at least 330 people had contracted Hepatitis A, while 21
suspected cases had yet to be confirmed, Xinhua news agency reported.
Forty-six patients have since been discharged from hospital and none of those
remaining were in a serious condition, Xinhua said.
Two students at Guiyang College were hospitalized after drinking "Zhuyuan"
bottled water on March 31. They were diagnosed with Hepatitis A.
People in Baiyun and Yunyan districts and Xiuwen County of Guiyang fell ill
after drinking the same brand of water after April 8.
As of April 14, 269 cases were reported, of which 246 were confirmed.
Officials said an extraordinary amount of melted snow leaked underground and
tainted the source of the bottled water.
Poor sanitation at the bottling company has also been blamed.
Police are still investigating the incident, the report said.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com:80/sp/article/2008/200804/20080425/article_357170.h\
tm

Officials say 10,000 more at risk in hepatitis outbreak
Associated Press - April 24, 2008 2:35 PM ET
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Southern Nevada Health District says another 10,000 people
may have been exposed to hepatitis C at an outpatient medical clinic in Las
Vegas.
District officials announced the updated estimate at a meeting Thursday. It
brings to 50,000 the number of people who authorities say might have been
infected with hepatitis or HIV through the Endoscopy Center of Nevada.
Officials say a review of health insurance records led to the higher number.
The health district began notifying more than 40,000 patients in February that
they might have been exposed to the potentially fatal viruses.
Authorities blame the infections on the reuse of needles and vials of medication
on multiple patients, and say they've traced eight acute cases of hepatitis C to
two clinics.
Information from: KLAS-TV, http://www.klas-tv.com
http://www.ktnv.com:80/Global/story.asp?S=8221970

Hi everyone! Bayla and Pam have been off line recently because last Saturday
Bayla came to Tallahassee to go with Pam to the Buffalo Soldier Motorcycle Rally
and set up a Hepatitis C educational booth. We know that we educated many and
a good time was had by all! The Buffalo Soldiers are a wonderful group of
people and we enjoyed meeting all the men and women that were there. We even
met a wonderfully spirited 92 year old female motorcycle rider so never say you
are too old for anything!
You can access the Buffalo Soldiers site at:
http://www.bsmctally.com/ Please read the history page. It is quite
interesting!
They had a great band called the Billy Rigsby Band that played some awesome
music (the best in NeoSoul and R&B) We were definitely singing and toe
tapping. (Can't dance if you are manning a booth! LOL)

Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Improved Access to Medications for Most
Seniors, but Sickest Seniors Continued Skipping Pills Because of Cost Issues,
Study Finds
The percentage of seniors who said they skipped taking medications because
of costs declined after the Medicare prescription drug benefit took effect in
January 2006, but the sickest beneficiaries still skip prescriptions because
they cannot afford to pay for them, according to a study published Wednesday in
the Journal of the American Medical Association, Reuters reports.
For the first study, Jeanne Madden and colleagues from Harvard Medical School
analyzed data from a government survey of 24,234 Medicare beneficiaries in 2004,
2005 and 2006 and found that 11.5% reported skipping medications in 2006, after
the drug benefit was introduced, compared with 14.1% in 2005. The study also
found that in 2006, 7.6% of beneficiaries cut back on spending for basic needs,
such as food or housing, to afford medications, compared with 11.1% in 2005.
However, beneficiaries classified as the sickest reported no improvement in
skipping prescriptions because of cost. These beneficiaries, who account for 27%
of overall Medicare Part D enrollment, skipped pills at about twice the rate of
healthier people in 2004 and 2005, according to the study.
An abstract of the study is available online.
Cost Issues
A separate study also published in JAMA on Wednesday found that 36% of Medicare
drug plan beneficiaries reported changing their behaviors in some manner after
enrolling in the drug benefit because of costs, including switching to a
less-costly drug, not refilling a prescription or experiencing financial burden.
For the study, lead author John Hsu of Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health
Policy Studies and colleagues in 2007 surveyed 1,040 Medicare beneficiaries who
were enrolled in the drug benefit.
Researchers also found that 60% were unaware their plans had the so-called
"doughnut hole" coverage gap. "The new Medicare Part D program provides billions
of dollars in new benefits for seniors, but also imposes complex and high levels
of cost-sharing," Hsu said in a statement, adding, "The study shows that many
seniors have trouble understanding these benefits and that this poor knowledge
limits their ability to manage their medication needs and costs" (Dunham,
Reuters, 4/22). Please note: The Kaiser Family Foundation is not associated with
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.
An abstract of the study is available online.
Commentary
"Medicare Part D: A Successful Start With Room for Improvement," JAMA: The JAMA
editorial by Dana Goldman and Geoffrey Joyce, both of the RAND Corporation and
the National Bureau of Economic Research, discusses successful aspects of
Medicare Part D, as well as emerging concerns, including increasing copayments
and changes in medications. The authors also examine whether the doughnut hole
gap is generating nonadherence to drug regimens (Goldman/Joyce, JAMA, 4/23).
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=51705

Service to mankind or medicine for profit
By Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-23 08:06
Are multinational pharmaceutical companies doing mankind a favor by conducting
clinical trials (on humans) or are they using Chinese people as guinea pigs to
make more money? The question came to the fore again with a court hearing on a
medical dispute in Beijing last week.
Ouyang Lidong, 36, of Hunan province, was admitted to Beijing You'an Hospital in
2006. Doctors diagnosed he had complicated liver problems and only a liver
transplant could save his life. Since a donor liver was not immediately
available, the hospital doctors recommended on Dec 5, 2006, that he be put on
extracorporeal liver assist device (ELAD), or an artificial liver. Developed and
manufactured by Vital Therapies Inc., California, the ELAD is designed to help
liver failure patients survive till a donor liver is available or another mode
of treatment is found, says the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website.
The device, however, has not been approved for use in the US.
Ouyang was part of a free trial program, and his wife He Binying accepted the
offer in a desperate bid to save his life. But he soon developed complications,
including rising blood sugar levels, breathing problems and hemoptysis (coughing
up of blood from the respiratory tract that indicates a severe infection of the
bronchi or lungs), which proved fatal.
But before that - in fact, as soon as he developed the new complications - his
wife requested the doctors to put him off the ELAD. Her requests went unheeded
till Dec 7. And by the time the therapy was stopped, Ouyang's condition had
deteriorated. He was transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) later, and
died on Dec 27, 2006.
A few days after his death, He Binying filed a lawsuit against the hospital,
alleging that its doctors' negligence had caused the death of her husband.
"Before we signed the paper giving consent for the use of the ELAD, the hospital
authorities had promised to stop the therapy as soon as any adverse effect or
discomfort was detected. They had insisted it was very safe, too," she says.
"They made the wrong recommendation for the ELAD trial, which is more suitable
for acute liver failure, whereas my husband had been suffering from hepatitis B
for 12 years." Worse, they broke their promise and continued the trial despite
his worsening condition, she says.
The hospital lawyer, on the other hand, argued in court last week that the
couple had signed the consent form before the trial, and knew full well the
efficacy of and potential risks associated with the ELAD. "That should be enough
to exempt the hospital from any legal liability," he said.
Also, Ouyang's condition was serious, and the doctors had diagnosed that he had
been suffering from the life-threatening hepatocirrhosis, and the only known
cure was a liver transplant. "It was natural for the hospital to have
recommended the therapy to prolong his life so he could get a donor liver," the
lawyer said.
A Beijing Youth Daily report on June 19, 2007, quoted hospital Vice-President
Duan Zhongping, who also heads the institution's Artificial Liver Treatment &
Training Center, as having said that before putting Ouyang on the ELAD, the
doctors had tried it on 28 other patients and none had died.
Vital Therapies Inc. announced on Jan 4, 2007, that it had received positive
response for its clinical trials on the first 45 patients at Beijing You'an and
302 Military hospitals. "Our center has treated a large number of patients with
other mechanical and bio-artificial liver therapies, and although the data for
ELAD are preliminary, none has looked more promising than ELAD to impact a
patient's long-term survival from a single treatment," Duan said in the
announcement.
Ouyang's case does not seem to have changed the course of ELAD treatment, for
the center has said it would continue with the trials till 90 consenting
patients undergo the therapy. The center insists, too, that no significant
harmful effects have been attributed to the ELAD, and has not posted any details
of Ouyang's case. "The ELAD trials in our hospital have been approved and
commissioned by China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), which is
authorized to approve and oversee clinical trials in the country," Duan said.
But according to the paper, SFDA's Medical Device Department official Hu Xueyan
denied that Duan had said so.
Other experts too do not agree with Duan. "It's unethical to conduct clinical
trials in China without the SFDA's approval," says Qiu Zongren of Asian Ethics
Committee, which helps oversee such schemes. "Trial patients should be well
informed of potential hazards and effects of the tests."
"Some foreign pharmaceutical companies and domestic medical institutions just
take advantage of regulatory loopholes to conduct clinical trials for their
products on innocent Chinese patients because the cost involved (in China) is
very low," said SFDA Deputy Director Zhang Jingli said at a workshop organized
by the administration in Beijing early this month. To plug such loopholes, he
said the agency will issue a sound set of laws and regulations on medical device
management.
Duan has a supporter in breast cancer specialist Jiang Zefei, of Beijing-based
Military 307 Hospital, though. Jiang says global drug trials have given Chinese
patients a new hope, especially because many of them are poor. It is not rare
for poor patients to forego treatment because of the high costs involved and the
"not-so-perfect" public healthcare system in China.
"Since 1997, hundreds of my critically ill patients have participated in trials
for different drugs to combat breast cancer," Jiang says. "Nearly all of them, I
should say, have benefited from the trials." Given the strict regulations on
clinical trials, sudden field inspections by the drug watchdog and the
self-discipline practiced by the hospital, there has been no medical dispute
over any of "my department's trials", he says.
"Medical ethics is the top concern in a drug trial Most of the therapies would
fail for terminal cancer patients. But clinical trials of the latest potential
remedies, provided free, might be effective for them. At least, they can save
the patients and their families from the heavy economic burden even if they
don't prove efficacious," he says.
An increasing number of foreign drug and medical device companies have begun
outsourcing their research and development (R&D) work in China, and clinical
trials are on top of their tasks. China attracts them with its sound
infrastructure, low research cost and the huge number of patients suffering from
chronic and infectious diseases. Experts say the cost of drug trials in China
can be as little as one-tenth of that in the US or Europe.
In the US, drug companies have a hard time trying to enroll enough people for
clinical trials. But the situation is quite different in China, which has 130
million hepatitis B patients and carriers alone - a number larger than the
combined populations of Britain and France. And many of such patients are poor
farmers or workers.
"The US has no such pool," says Terry E. Winters, British biochemist and
chairman of the Vital Therapies Inc. Besides, foreign companies' drugs and
medical devices have to be tested locally in China before they can enter the
country's huge market, "That boosts trial outsourcing too," he said.
Big drug companies doubled their investment in R&D to $2.2 billion in China and
India, and most of the additional amount came to China. Drug companies' business
is booming, and with it have increased medical disputes, including those over
clinical trials. Some of these cases, like Ouyang's, end up in court, and
verdicts in such cases are slow to come by, given the series of complicated
medical verifications and appraisals.
Clinical trials for more than 800 new medications, including drugs and medical
devices, are conducted in the country every year, according to official figures,
and most of them are conducted by foreign pharmaceutical companies.
Clinical trials can indeed be a problem - not only of medical ethics, but also
of proper healthcare, poverty and helpless patients' desperation. And only
foolproof government regulation and socially conscious drug companies can make
them beneficial to human beings.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/23/content_6636944.htm

Man on a charity mission
Author:
Rowan Cowley
This Anzac Day, Killara resident and physician Dr Michael Stormon will trace the
footsteps of many Australian veterans by walking the Kokoda Track to raise money
for the Liver Transplant Unit at Westmead Children's Hospital.
Dr Stormon will leave on April 18. He aims to complete his journey along the
historic Papua New Guinean track on April 26.
"I've always wanted to do it, it's partly about adventure and partly about
retracing the steps of history," he said.
Dr Stormon said the funds raised could create a database for the Westmead liver
transplant unit, allowing staff to access information more efficiently and to
assess what the hospital does and doesn't do well.
He said he had been preparing for the trip with regular morning swims and long
walks around Killara with a backpack containing two phone books.
"I'm trying to prepare myself in the best way possible, but I can't replicate
[PNG[`]s] humidity."
He has raised more than $15,000 so far. Donate through
www.everydayhero.com.au/Michael_Stormon .

A New Suit for Vertex
By Brian Lawler
As Rule Breakers analyst Charly Travers once said, "Drug fails, get sued."
Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: VRTX), however, is getting sued after one of its
drugs apparently succeeded.
Shareholders filed class action lawsuits against the company last week related
to its reporting of clinical trial results for its hepatitis C treatment,
telaprevir. The lawsuits charge that the company violated federal securities
laws by issuing a series of misrepresentations about telaprevir to the market
last year.
One suit claims that Vertex "shocked investors when it disclosed less than
stellar results from a phase of testing [PROVE-2]," and that "the results came
as a surprise to investors since the company failed to indicate the findings of
PROVE-2 during the Class Period."
All the shareholder lawsuits appear to be based on Vertex's PROVE-2 phase 2
telaprevir study results, announced last year, which appeared somewhat
underwhelming at first glance. For instance, compared to the control group in
the study, telaprevir improved on the number of patients cured of their
hepatitis C only by six percentage points.
However, the lawsuits don't mention that the control group in this study
performed unusually well, with 59% of patients showing no signs of hepatitis C,
when the interim PROVE-2 results were announced last year. Even more
importantly, the control group study results were still not yet complete. Such
results almost always get worse over time, as some hepatitis C patients
experience relapses (a phenomenon known as viral rebound).
Historically, fewer than 50% of newly infected chronic hepatitis C genotype 1
patients are cured of the virus when given standard interferon treatments from
Roche and Schering-Plough (NYSE: SGP). So the 65% of patients cured of their
hepatitis C after being given telaprevir in addition to the standard of care
look pretty good in the PROVE-2 study.
When compared to the control group in another Vertex phase 2 study (PROVE-1),
which is further along than PROVE-2, Vertex's telaprevir results look even
better. Only 45% of PROVE-1 control group patients had no signs of hepatitis C
at the end of their treatment.
Investors currently holding shares of Vertex should do themselves a favor and
avoid these class action lawsuits. Even if Vertex's insurance agency gets lazy
and settles the cases for several hundred thousand dollars, litigation fees
would likely eat up whatever proceeds shareholders could gain from such baseless
lawsuits.
Drugmakers will always know the results of their own clinical studies ahead of
time. They'll always decide to wait until scientific conferences or journal
article publications to release that data. And as such, they will always be open
to these sorts of shareholder class action lawsuits, whether or not the suit has
merit.
This same ritual happens to nearly every drugmaker, as it did to former Hidden
Gems pick Flamel Technologies (Nasdaq: FLML) last year. For better or worse,
this aspect of pharma investing will never go away.
http://www.fool.com:80/investing/high-growth/2008/04/21/a-new-suit-for-vertex.as\
px

Drug abuse lands cops in deadly mess
22 Apr 2008, 0346 hrs IST,Yudhvir Rana & Shivani Mehra,TNN
AMRITSAR: Rampant drug abuse and unsafe sex is pricking hard the Punjab Police,
jeopardizing the lives of as many as 178 police personnel in the district of
Tarn Taran alone. What has only compounded their case is the indifferent
attitude of government, which is yet to wake up to the ticking bomb within its
ranks.
In startling revelations that should be enough to jolt the police top brass,
Sandeep Kakkar, the senior medical officer at Police Hospital, Tarn Taran, told
TOI on Monday that during a health check-up doctors found 178 police personnel
carrying the Hepatitis B, C and HIV virus.
"In fact, 72 of the 178 who tested positive for these dreaded diseases have been
shortlisted as critical," he said, adding that because expenditure involved in
treating Hepatitis C was Rs 3.30 lakh per person, the only way these cops could
possibly survive was with government aid.
Every Hepatitis B or C patient has to be given Alpha B 2 Interferon injection
that costs around Rs 14,000 each and 24 such injections have to be given to
complete the course.
"None of the police personnel is in a position to spend this much money and they
are inching towards death due to lack of treatment," Kakkar said.
"Unclean syringes used by the drug addicts in the police department coupled with
unsafe sex practiced by some of them are the major causes of the deadly viruses
spreading."
IG, Border Range, Rajpal Meena admitted that drug addiction was a major problem
in Tarn Taran district and it was seriously affecting the police force.
He said he had already taken up with the DGP the issue of treatment of the
infected cops.
Others too have stepped up efforts to have the suffering police personnel
treated urgently. AK Vermani, an advocate, informed that sub-inspector Sucha
Singh and head constable Balbir Singh have filed a petition in court seeking
immediate financial help for the 72 critical cops.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Punjab_Police_plagued_by_drug_abuse/ar\
ticleshow/2969652.cms

"WALK THE CAPITOL"
in Austin on
World Hepatitis Awareness Day
May 19
AMIONEIN 12?
HOSTED BY HEPCAN AND
TEXAS LIVER COALITION
Come join us for the first ever "WALK THE CAPITOL" in Austin on
WORLD HEPATITIS AWARENESS DAY May 19 th
We will be walking throughout the Texas Capitol Building handing out education
materials regarding Hepatitis B & C and Liver Disease to State Senate and
Representatives Offices.
Use your VOICE by letting our Texas leaders know what needs to
be done about Hepatitis B & C and Liver Disease.
AMIONEIN 12 T-SHIRTS AVAILABLE
CATERED BOX LUNCH At CAPITOL
FOR ALL WALKERS
LET'S EDUCATE OUR STATE LEADERS ABOUT
HEPATITIS AND LIVER DISEASE
THE WORLD WILL BE CELEBRATING THE FIRST
WORLD HEPATITIS AWERENESS DAY
MAY 19
LET'S JOIN OUR VOICES WITH THE NATION AND THE WORLD
SIGN UP NOW. Contact HepCAN with the following information:
Yes, I want to Walk the Capitol ________
Name

Legacies of endurance
By Adrian Walker
Globe Columnist / April 22, 2008
There's a song by The Calling with lyrics that stuck in Laura Dempsey's mind
yesterday. The song is called "Our Lives" and it includes the following verse:
more stories like this
Cause these are the
days worth living
These are the years we're given
And these are the moments
These are the times
Let's make the best
out of our lives
Actually, the song wasn't just in her mind: the last line was written on the
singlet she wore as she ran the Boston Marathon in memory of her late friend,
Laura Linehan.
Dempsey has run the race the last three years to honor her friend, and to raise
money for the American Liver Foundation; yesterday, she ran it in her friend's
memory. Linehan, of Melrose, died during liver transplant surgery earlier this
month.
"I had her in my mind the whole time," Dempsey, of Watertown, said after the
race, which she finished in a little over four hours. "In some ways it was very
motivating, and in other ways it was sad. I was very heartbroken that she wasn't
going to be here physically. I just put one foot in front of the other. She was
with me every step of the way."
Linehan died at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., after battling liver
disease for much of her life. She contracted liver disease as an infant. During
transplant surgery when she was 2, she received a blood transfusion that
resulted in her contracting Hepatitis C.
Her final days could not have been more wrenching. She was near death when her
parents made a televised appeal for a liver. A donor liver was located at 5 a.m.
the next morning - the miracle her family and many friends had been hoping for.
But a few hours later, unable to withstand the surgery, she was gone. She was 20
years old.
Unlike most people of any age, though, Linehan left a legacy. She and her family
became actively - urgently - involved in persuading the public to become organ
donors, and her life has helped raise awareness about liver disease.
Ann Linehan, Laura's mother, was at her daughter's side for every gut-wrenching
second of her ordeal. Yesterday she was on the course, in Coolidge Corner,
cheering Dempsey on.
"I'm still trying to recover from three things," she said. "One, her death
itself; two, the horrible 18 days she spent in (intensive care) before she died;
and three, the past 19 years of living with liver disease. Now, it's all gone."
Her daughter's death has left her with a purpose. "I'm determined to have her
life make a difference," Linehan said. "Although she can't continue on, our
family will, and we want to raise awareness and find a cure for hepatitis."
Linehan went to a brunch at the Westin Copley Place Sunday saluting some of the
runners. The team running for liver research - some 248 strong - was honored,
and there were tributes to Laura Linehan.
"Laura would have been thrilled," Linehan said. "She and Laura were so close,
and supporting her in her run was something Laura always wanted to do."
The Lauras, Dempsey and Linehan, got to know each other a few years ago, when
Dempsey was preparing for her first marathon run. They formed an instant bond,
one that has changed Dempsey's life. She worked in sales at the time, unhappily.
Now she works as a fund-raiser for the American Liver Foundation.
"I learned a lot about liver disease during my first run," said Dempsey, 32. She
raised $11,000 yesterday for research. "Everything in my life changed after
getting to know Laura and to know about the ALF."
That song Dempsey quoted on her back had been played at Laura Linehan's
graveside. The song is not about death, which is precisely why it reminds her of
her late friend.
"It's not about dying, it's about living, and how we have to make the most of
our lives," Dempsey said. "That's exactly what she did in her short time."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@....
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/04/22/legacies_of_e\
ndurance/?page=full

10% of people given fibrinogen have HCV
The Yomiuri Shimbun
About 10 percent of the 7,400 or so patients who were administered the blood
product fibrinogen were infected with hepatitis C, a Health, Labor and Welfare
Ministry study team announced Tuesday.
The team has been investigating patient records kept at medical institutions to
which fibrinogen was shipped. The product was made by Green Cross Corp., a
predecessor of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp.
An estimated 10,000 people are thought to have been infected with the hepatitis
C virus after the blood product fibrinogen was used in surgical operations
involving about 280,000 people. However, the results of the investigation
suggest this percentage of infection, 3.6 percent, could be lower than the true
figure, medical sources said.
In its interim report, the study team found 99 people infected after being
treated with fibrinogen have died from hepatitis-related diseases.
Fibrin glue, used as a surgical adhesive, was the most common use of fibrinogen
among patients, making up about 40 percent of cases. Direct intravenous
injection of fibrinogen as a hemostat agent in operations, including
parturitions, accounted for 30 percent of treatments involving the product.
The survey results prompted the ministry to renew its call for people who have
had surgery to have hepatitis checkups.
Out of 6,609 medical institutions to which Green Cross delivered the product,
644 institutions that kept individual patients' records of administration of
fibrinogen were surveyed at the end of February. Of them, 475 institutions
provided valid responses.
According to the survey, 7,406 patients were administered fibrinogen, and 741 of
them were found to have been infected with HCV. Of them, 12 also had been
infected with the hepatitis B virus, while 40 others had been infected with HBV
alone.
Hospitals are unsure whether 4,908 of the 7,406 patients have hepatitis. The
number of people found to have been infected likely will further rise as the
investigation progresses, the medical sources said.
Of patients administered fibrinogen, 1,817, or 24.5 percent, have already died.
Of them, 99 died from hepatitis-related diseases.
(Apr. 23, 2008)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp:80/dy/national/20080423TDY01306.htm

Turmoil deepens in fed AIDS funding crunch
HEALTH / Uncertainty persists with hep C cash gone, HIV funding on the block
Marcus McCann / Capital Xtra / Tuesday, April 22, 2008
"It's like constantly wondering, 'What are we going to do?'" says John McTavish
from Kingston, speaking about planning AIDS prevention programs. "You wonder,
'what's next?' You're always trying to think ahead, to what we should be doing
in the future."
But that's just gotten a lot more complicated, says McTavish, the director of
HIV/AIDS Regional Services for Kingston (HARS). He doesn't know what AIDS
programming will be available to residents there a year from now.
That's because service groups across the country are being kept in the dark
about what the federal government's contribution to their programming will look
like past March 2009.
HARS has two part-time employees working on HIV prevention and education, both
sponsored by the feds. They give out important health information to high-risk
youth, the gay community, and others.
"It's hard to keep your staff and for them to want to commit," says McTavish.
"Stress level goes up - for not just of those staff, but for all the staff. So
you have turnover, and then you have to begin all over again."
Brian Lester agrees. He heads up prevention work at the AIDS Committee of
London. There, the federal programming pays for one full-time employee to run
education campaigns in bathhouses, bars and in gay chatrooms online.
"That money helped us dedicate resources to the gay-bi-MSM community," says
Lester. "We would lose our capacity to do the extensive outreach we do."
In Canada, the provinces typically pay for AIDS groups' core funding. The
community, through fundraising, pays for most of the service delivery. The feds
kick in for HIV prevention, education and some support work.
Or they have, historically.
There are less than 11 months of federal AIDS cash remaining. Last month, the
clock ran out on federal funding for hepatitis C work. It has yet to be
replaced.
It serves as a chilling precedent. It also means that AIDS groups, which often
provide hep C programming, are already feeling the pinch.
HARS received federal hep C money "off and on" over the last five years. It has
always been "piecemeal," says McTavish.
"We have people living with hep C coming through our office every week.
Especially when it comes to services, we don't want to say, 'No we can't help
you,'" he says.
And in Kingston, "we don't have anywhere else to send them," says McTavish.
"We may have been the only game in town for hep C," he says. "Whereas in larger
urban centres, there may have been other people doing the work or a little bit
of the work."
McTavish may see hep C money again. But that uncertainty makes planning
difficult. Elsewhere, groups like the Toronto-based Africans in Partnership
Against AIDS still haven't heard if money is coming in between now and March
2009.
"We submitted a request and are still waiting for a response," says Fanta
Ongoiba, the program's director, in an email to Capital Xtra. "I know that some
agencies have already received their approval letter and some not yet. So we
don't know if it has been approved or not."
Historically, funding has been issued in four-year blocks. But since the
Conservative Party took the helm, they have simply extended existing funding in
six-month and one-year increments. The result is perpetual uncertainty for
groups that receive funding - and no opportunity for new groups to apply.
The problems are magnified for AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) in areas that
are rapidly growing. Durham Region is growing by 10 percent every five years.
It's home to some of Ontario's quickest expansion - between 2001 and 2006, the
city of Whitby grew by over 27 percent. Some estimates suggest Durham region
will double in population by 2020.
AIDS Durham has been shut out of federal funding since 2000. Peter Richtig is
the director.
"That's part of the problem," says Richtig. "But there's never been an adequate
pool of money for AIDS organizations, so it's incredibly competitive. Emerging
agencies don't have that kind of staff and they don't have the capacity to jump
through all the hoops."
"We're the only people providing unconditional support, and we're out
panhandling in the community when we should be in the office with clients," he
says.
It's an even more bitter pill to swallow because the envelope was supposed to
get bigger in 2007, not smaller. For Ontario, $1 million in promised additional
federal funding was yanked in 2007, with a further $1 million of promised money
gone for 2008-2009. By 2012, the federal funding envelope will be $7 million
smaller.
Murray Jose is from PWA Toronto. Like in Kingston, PWA Toronto's federal money
runs out next March.
"Many organizations that were not successful in the last grant application round
have had no opportunity to re apply and get federal funding - so there is huge
disparity between ASOs," says Jose.
"We would have applied and been able to create new programs or adjust our work
to most effectively respond to changing needs of our clients."
As for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), they're keeping their cards
close to their chest. On hep C funding, they've committed to renewing their
contributions later this year. But they're silent about community AIDS
programming.
"We continue to work with community organizations that make a positive impact on
addressing the hepatitis C epidemic in Canada, and we look forward to supporting
more community projects on a national and regional scale," says PHAC's Phillipe
Brideau in a written statement to Capital Xtra.
He says that in 2007-08, the "main focus" of hep C spending was on "strategic
planning," including meetings with service providers across the country.
"We are anticipating announcing our planned approach in the coming weeks," he
continues. "We realize that community organizations have been waiting for some
time to hear news of federal funding, and we are optimistic that our renewed
approach will provide our partners with the support they need."
But with AIDS funding, they won't even say what the shape of the review looks
like.
"As for the overall Grants and Contributions fiscal review, final decisions have
not yet been made on the budget levels," he writes.
Groups in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta are fighting back. Last month, the Ontario
AIDS Network started a postcard campaign, calling on the Conservative government
to restore funding to promised levels.
They've also launched a national website, increasedaidsfunding.ca.
The message to politicians is that cash promised in 2005 needs to be delivered,
says Rick Kennedy, director of the Ontario AIDS Network.
That would mean increasing federal contributions to ASOs to $13.9 million in
Canada, or $4.5 million for Ontario.
"They've never said that the money is not necessary or not needed," says
Kennedy. "They've only said that they can't afford it because of
across-the-board cuts to PHAC. We're left wondering where their leadership is on
this."
The frontline workers agree.
"We're concerned overall with the direction that this government," says Lester
from AIDS Committee of London. "It's about commitment to the issue."
http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=2&STORY_ID=4662&PUB_TEMPLATE_I\
D=1

2008 HBF Patient Conference Registration Now Open!
The Hepatitis B Foundation is pleased to sponsor the 8th annual B Informed
Patient Conference, which continues to be the only national conference of its
kind. The conference will be held June 27-28 at St. Vincent Medical Center in
Los Angeles, CA, in collaboration with the Hepatitis B Information & Support
List and the Asian Pacific Liver Center.
There will be an extended Friday session for parents of children with HBV
featuring pediatric HBV specialist Dr. Philip Rosenthal. The conference keynote
speaker, Dr. Robert Gish will address state of the art management in the
treatment of hepatitis B. Special workshops in Chinese and Korean are only a few
of the exciting new additions to this year's Patient Conference. Register!
http://www.hepb.org/patients/patient_conference.htm

Subject: Prayer
This is an awesome prayer
Believe it and you shall be blessed. The problem with
many of us is that we don't believe that God will open
a window and pour out blessings that we won't have
room to receive them. I dare anyone to try God. He is
true to His word. God cannot lie and His promises are
sure.
Three things will happen to you this coming week:
(1) You will find favor with someone you don't
expect;
(2) You will be too relevant to be ignored;
(3) You will encounter God and you will never remain
the same again.
My prayer for you today:
The eyes beholding this message shall not behold evil,
the hands that will send this message to others shall
not labor in vain, the mouth saying Amen to this
prayer shall laugh forever. Remain in God's love as
you send this prayer to everybody on your list. Have a
lovely journey of life! Trust in the Lord with all
your heart and He will never fail you because He is
AWESOME !
If you truly need a blessing, continue reading this
email:
Heavenly Father, most Gracious and Loving God, I pray
to you that you abundantly bless my family and me. I
know that you recognize, that a family is more than
just a mother, father, sister, brother, husband and
wife, but all who believe and trust in you. Father, I
send up a prayer request for blessings for not only
the person who sent this to me, but for me and
all that I have forwarded this message on to. And that
the power of joined prayer by those who believe and
trust in you is more powerful than anything. I thank
you in advance for your blessings. Father God,
deliver the person reading this right now from debt
and
debt's burdens. Release your Godly wisdom that I may
be a good steward over all that You have given me
Father, for I know how wonderful and mighty you
are and how if we just obey you and walk In your word
and have the faith of a mustard seed that you will
pour out blessings. I thank you now Lord for the
recent blessings I have received and for the blessings
yet to come because I know you are not done with me
yet. In Jesus' name, I pray.
Amen .
TAKE 60 SECONDS and send this on quickly and within
hours, you will have
caused a multitude of people to pray to God for each
other.
Then sit back and watch the power of God work in your
life for doing the
thing that you know He loves.
Remain Blessed!!!
walk in peace.
brenda

Melissa Duran, Reporter
Patients Anxious After 8th Hep C Case Found
The Southern Nevada Health District has confirmed an eighth case of hepatitis C.
In total, two clinics are responsible for unsafe injection practices, but
thousands of valley residents are now wondering why they still haven't been
notified.
Originally, it was just the patients from the Endoscopy Center on Shadow Lane
who were notified of the possible exposure to hepatitis C. But patients of the
Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center on Burnham Avenue are also worried because of an
acute hepatitis case linked to that clinic, but they still haven't been
notified.
The problem is, with no patient records to look at, the health district says
they don't know who or how many people were put at risk.
"They should at least get a letter and say, 'Get tested. Let's put the worry out
of your mind,'" said former patient Andrew Basile.
Basile, who had a procedure done at the Burnham clinic, says he didn't wait to
get tested.
"Nobody has contacted me. I've received no letter from the doctors here on the
colonoscopy. It was just my own doing," he said.
But not everyone is as proactive. The health district says in order to notify
patients of the risk, they need patient files. But the files were seized by
Metro for their criminal investigation. The health district was supposed to hire
a company to organize boxes of records, a job that has now fallen into Metro's
lap.
Eyewitness News has learned a letter was sent by Sheriff Doug Gillespie to
county, city and health leaders expressing his frustration. The sheriff says the
health district took nearly three weeks before letting Metro know they weren't
going to take the lead and handle the files, saying they don't have legal
authority.
Sheriff Gillespie feels they wasted precious time.
"When signing the contract, you would have to take on several liabilities with
the records