Australia: Region has third highest hepatitis C numbers in NSW

"Only an estimated 1.7% of the population living with the blood-borne virus have accessed treatment."

THE Northern Rivers continues to have one of the highest number of hepatitis C cases in the state with 233 new notifications last year.

Figures from the NSW Hepatitis B and C Strategies 2014 annual data report rank the Northern NSW Local Health District third in the state with 79 hepatitis C notifications per 100,000 people.

Northern NSW Local Health District HIV and related programs manager Jenny Heslop said most of the 233 people notified had likely been living with hepatitis C for many years.

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Anger at hepatitis C trial with call for money to be spent on cures

A MEDICAL trial to teach hepatitis C sufferers how to avoid infecting their children with the virus has been criticised as fearmongering and a waste of desperately needed health funding.

The State Government will partly fund the trial, called Families Living Healthily with hepatitis C, which aims to teach sufferers how to better prevent transmission of the bloodborne virus.

More than 5000 Tasmanians have been diagnosed with hep C, but medical experts believe many more people unknowingly carry the liver-destroying virus in their blood.

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Diabetes and Fatty Liver Associated with Further Liver Problems--- Adding liver fibrosis to the long list of diabetic complications under consideration...

A recent study published in Hepatology evaluated various risk factors for liver fibrosis in a Dutch population. The call for concern is the prevalence of liver fibrosis in a patient population with low prevalence of hepatitis—the usual suspect of causation.

Some links have shown non-alcoholic liver disease has a connection to liver fibrosis. Certainly, identifying modifiable risk factors and their impact in developing liver problems can be important to targeting change.

The prospective cohort study was conducted over two years in Rotterdam on 3,041 patients, 45 years or older. Abdominal ultrasounds were used to scan their livers and evaluate liver stiffness to characterize potential fibrosis. Further collections of blood, anthropometric measures, medical history, demographics, drug use, alcohol consumption, smoking history and comorbidities were evaluated.

Just over one-third (35.5%) of the patients had the presence of fatty liver and 5.6% of the patients had a liver stiffness over 8 kPa or clinically relevant for liver fibrosis. Not surprisingly, having the presence of positive surface antigens for hepatitis B or C resulted in a five-fold increased chance in also having liver fibrosis

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D.C. Needle Policy Change Led to Massive HIV Infection Decline in 2 Years

Syringe exchange programs for injection drug users have proved successful at decreasing rates of needle sharing without increasing rates of illegal drug use. But for years, a policy shortcoming made Washington, D.C., the only city in the country that could not fund them. Caught between federal and local jurisdiction, the District has long faced issues regarding its autonomy. And according to research published Thursday, those policy issues can cost lives.

In 1998, the federal government banned the use of federal funding for syringe exchange programs. State and local governments could fund them, but the District could not. In 2007, the federal government altered that policy, and the District's municipal government began funding programs in 2008.

In a new study in the journal AIDS and Behavior, researchers used mathematical modeling to calculate how many HIV infections the policy change prevented and how much money it saved. The researchers found that in the two years after the municipal money started flowing following the policy change, there were 176 new HIV cases reported in the District involving injection drug use. Without that policy change, the researchers estimated, the number would have been 296 cases. The policy change had helped avert 120 cases.

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First-ever World Hepatitis Summit calls for national programmes-- Follows rise in hepatitis deaths for fifth consecutive year

The first World Hepatitis Summit is being held this week in Glasgow to urge countries to develop national programmes to help eliminate viral hepatitis.

Deaths from the disease have increased for a fifth year running and there are currently 400 million people living with the condition as it now claims an estimated 1.45 million lives each year, making it one of the world's leading causes of death.

Policymakers and stakeholders at the three-day meeting will discuss the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis, which sets targets for 2030.

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Free Helpline and App for Hepatitis C Patients Offer Peer Support and Self-Care Tools

Viral hepatitis is known as the silent epidemic, because it is a disease that is both under-recognized and underdiagnosed. Hepatitis can result from infection with several different viruses, including hepatitis C virus (HCV). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 3.2 million people are chronically infected with HCV and that nearly half are unaware of their infection. Untreated, hepatitis C infection can lead to liver cancer and death; yet, we have more tools than ever before to respond successfully to this epidemic. The availability of expanded coverage for preventive screening for hepatitis C under the Affordable Care Act and new therapies with cure rates over 90% are galvanizing consumer and provider awareness of this important public health issue.
One of the four goals of the national Viral Hepatitis Action Plan seeks to improve HCV testing and linkage to care for the estimated millions of Americans who are living with undiagnosed hepatitis C. The plan also seeks to ensure that individuals, who have been previously diagnosed with HCV— but are not in care— take steps to prevent damage from chronic, untreated HCV infection

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Can vaccination contribute to hepatitis C elimination efforts? A Q+A with Nick Scott

In a recent research article published in BMC Medicine, Nick Scott and colleagues used a mathematical modeling approach to show that vaccination is likely to play a role in reducing hepatitis C prevalence. Here, Dr Scott answers our questions about the study, and explores whether vaccination could help to eliminate the infection.

Nick Scott is an Econometrician at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Since completing his mathematics PhD in 2012, he has been modelling infectious disease transmission among vulnerable populations to inform public health policy.

In most developed settings, new HCV infections and HCV-related liver disease occur among largely disjoint populations. New HCV infections primarily occur among people who inject drugs (PWID) through the sharing of injecting paraphernalia, but the slow progression to liver disease means that the burden of disease is increasingly occurring in an aging population.

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