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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/health/hepatitis-c-a-silent-killer-meets-its-match.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
(I thought this headline was a little overblown, although this latest clinical trial does represent a vast improvement over existing treatments for Hepatitis C...for many cases the entire treatment is now through oral medications with fewer side effects. Next step...the CDC recommending screenings for baby boomers, who may not know they have the virus...but it's expensive.)
"Determined to get rid of the hepatitis C infection that was slowly destroying his liver, Arthur Rubens tried one experimental treatment after another. None worked, and most brought side effects, like fever, insomnia, depression, anemia and a rash that “felt like your skin was on fire.”
But this year, Dr. Rubens, a professor of management at Florida Gulf Coast University, entered a clinical trial testing a new pill against hepatitis C. Taking it was “a piece of cake.” And after three months of treatment, the virus was cleared from his body at last.
“I had a birthday in September,” Dr. Rubens, 63, said. “I told my wife I don’t want anything. It would take away from the magnitude of this gift.”
Medicine may be on the brink of an enormous public health achievement: turning the tide against hepatitis C, a silent plague that kills more Americans annually than AIDS and is the leading cause of liver transplants. If the effort succeeds, it will be an unusual conquest of a viral epidemic without using a vaccine.
“There is no doubt we are on the verge of wiping out hepatitis C,” said Dr. Mitchell L. Shiffman, the director of the Bon Secours Liver Institute of Virginia and a consultant to many drug companies.
Over the next three years, starting within the next few weeks, new drugs are expected to come to market that will cure most patients with the virus, in some cases with a once-a-day pill taken for as little as eight weeks, and with only minimal side effects.
That would be a vast improvement over current therapies, which cure about 70 percent of newly treated patients but require six to 12 months of injections that can bring horrible side effects.
The latest data on the experimental drugs is being presented at The Liver Meeting in Washington, which ends Tuesday.
But the new drugs are expected to cost from $60,000 to more than $100,000 for a course of treatment. Access could be a problem, particularly for the uninsured and in developing countries. Even if discounts or generic drugs are offered to poor countries, there are no international agencies or charities that buy hepatitis C medications, as there are for H.I.V. and malaria drugs..."