A Saskatoon nurse predicts a surge of liver disease among baby boomers due to undiagnosed Hepatitis C.
“We’re going to see this huge wave of patients with end stage liver disease that are going to be dying from, potentially, liver cancer, kidney failure due to issues with their liver, and this is now the beginning,” said Lesley Gallagher, a Hepatitis C treatment support nurse with the Saskatoon Infectious Disease Care Network in Riversdale.
“We’re seeing it now, and we’re going to keep on seeing it.”
The number of Canadians with advanced liver disease is increasing, according to a 2014 study published in the Canadian Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. More than 20 per cent of those who are infected with Hepatitis C will have significant complications from their disease by 2035, the study found.
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Showing posts with label boomers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boomers. Show all posts
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Quest in broad deal with CDC for hepatitis analysis
(Reuters) - Laboratory testing company Quest Diagnostics Inc said on Tuesday it had signed a $520,000 agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify trends in screening, diagnosis and treatment of four strains of viral hepatitis.
Quest will provide the U.S. public health agency with analytics and access to Quest's national database of clinical testing hepatitis data, which includes information from more than 20 billion test results.
The agreement expands on Quest's previous efforts with the CDC on hepatitis C testing data for Baby Boomers, or individuals born between 1945 and 1965, one of the groups most exposed to the virus.
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Quest will provide the U.S. public health agency with analytics and access to Quest's national database of clinical testing hepatitis data, which includes information from more than 20 billion test results.
The agreement expands on Quest's previous efforts with the CDC on hepatitis C testing data for Baby Boomers, or individuals born between 1945 and 1965, one of the groups most exposed to the virus.
Read more....
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
New study casts doubt on wisdom of mass hepatitis C testing
Widespread screening for hepatitis C — a recommendation that has been aggressively pushed by public health officials, with the advent of new, expensive drugs to cure the viral infection and prevent liver-disease deaths — may be premature, a group of scientists is arguing.
In a paper published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, the scientists say there’s little concrete evidence that screening all Baby Boomers for hepatitis C — a policy endorsed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health agencies — will save lives. Plus screening and treatment could cause unnecessary harm to millions of people who test positive for the virus but never experience any ill effects from it, they say.
“The question is whether these aggressive screening policies are justified and whether they would result in more benefit than harm,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford epidemiologist and an author of the paper. “We know very little about the potential harms of these drugs, especially in the long-term. And we don’t know how they will translate into long-term benefits.”
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In a paper published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, the scientists say there’s little concrete evidence that screening all Baby Boomers for hepatitis C — a policy endorsed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health agencies — will save lives. Plus screening and treatment could cause unnecessary harm to millions of people who test positive for the virus but never experience any ill effects from it, they say.
“The question is whether these aggressive screening policies are justified and whether they would result in more benefit than harm,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford epidemiologist and an author of the paper. “We know very little about the potential harms of these drugs, especially in the long-term. And we don’t know how they will translate into long-term benefits.”
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