Can Non-Invasive Tests Assess Fibrosis in Hepatitis?

 Percutaneous liver biopsy is a proven way to rate the fibrosis stage both in hepatitis in chronic hepatitis C patients and hepatitis B  patients. But it is uncomfortable for patients, risks complications and is prone to assembling errors.

Reporting at ID Week 2015 in San Diego, CA, Tuma Demirdal, DR, and colleagues at the Katip Celebi University in Izmir, Turkey compared these invasive tests with non-invasive methods.

They looked at 236 patients with chronic hepatitits C and hepatitis B who had ultrasound guided liver biopsy over a seven year period Histological grading of necroinflammation and fibrosis ere performed according to Knodell an ISAK scoring systems. APRI, n-APRI, FIB-4, FI scores were calculated.

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RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Woman on a mission to get clean needles to drug users

Motivated by friends' deaths, she is setting up a nonprofit group and lobbying local officials -- with some offering resistance and some expressing support.

Growing up, Katie Chamberlain walked the straight and narrow as a “dorky straight-A student.”

The Riverside resident attended a Christian school until ninth grade. The stark reality of drugs hit home the second week of classes, when a classmate died of a heroin overdose.

Over the years, the 27-year-old watched with sadness and despair as too many friends fell victim to illegal narcotics.

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World Hepatitis Summit harnesses global momentum to eliminate viral hepatitis

2 SEPTEMBER 2015 ¦ GLASGOW - Participants at the first-ever World Hepatitis Summit will urge countries to develop national programmes that can ultimately eliminate viral hepatitis as a problem of public health concern.

“We know how to prevent viral hepatitis, we have a safe and effective vaccine for hepatitis B, and we now have medicines that can cure people with hepatitis C and control hepatitis B infection,” said Dr Gottfried Hirnschall, Director of the WHO’s Global Hepatitis Programme. “Yet access to diagnosis and treatment is still lacking or inaccessible in many parts of the world. This summit is a wake-up call to build momentum to prevent, diagnose, treat - and eventually eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health problem.”

Around 400 million people are currently living with viral hepatitis, and the disease claims an estimated 1.45 million lives each year, making it one of the world’s leading causes of death. Hepatitis B and C together cause approximately 80% of all liver cancer deaths, yet most people living with chronic viral hepatitis are unaware of their infection.

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14 million EU citizens living with Hepatitis C; low figures for Malta

There are currently around 13.3 million Europeans living with hepatitis B and 14 million living with hepatitis C, MEP Miriam Dalli pointed out in a question posed to the European Parliament.

“Approximately 120,000 people in Europe every year die because of these diseases.”

In Malta, the number of cases did not seem high in 2013, with 3.3 people per 100,000 being reported as having been infected that year. The number in other states is considerably higher such as in the UK, where the number stood at 21.5 per 100,000 people (nearly 14,000 in total that year).

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