Tony Farrugia, 43, of Howitt’s Gardens, Eynesbury, is pushing for the scope of the Penrose Inquiry – a public inquiry into HIV and Hepatitis C infections acquired from NHS treatment with blood and blood products in Scotland – to bring justice to patients and their families. He said that it would still be relevant to his cause in England, as the blood was given to patients prior to the Scottish NHS being separated from England.
Mr Farrugia lost his father Barry and uncles Victor and David – who were all haemophiliacs – as a result of the treatment they were given with contaminated blood. The hereditary condition, which prevents blood from clotting, meant that they required the protein Factor VIII to be administered during medical treatment.
Unbeknown to the public, the NHS had sourced paid-for blood donations which were distributed by American suppliers and taken from communities with an increased risk of having potentially deadly infections, such as prison inmates.
Read more...
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Médecins slams Gilead for licencing new hepatitis drug in India
The well-known international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières has strongly criticised the decision by US-based Gilead Sciences to expand its existing voluntary licence agreement with eight Indian generic drug-makers for sofosbuvir and ledipasvir to include its investigational compound GS-5816, saying it will restrict access to the drugs for people across the developing world.
''Gilead's anti-diversion programme not only potentially jeopardises patient confidentiality and privacy, but could also exclude many patients that may lack the citizenship and identification papers that Gilead requires them to have in order to get access to treatment.
''Gilead's programme introduces coercion and policing upon medical providers and may result in treatment interruptions for patients, leading to treatment resistance and failure. As far as is known to MSF, such a programme, motivated solely by commercial interests, is unprecedented,'' MSF said.
- See more at: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/pharma/20150128_hepatitis.html#sthash.REnGdQcH.dpuf
''Gilead's anti-diversion programme not only potentially jeopardises patient confidentiality and privacy, but could also exclude many patients that may lack the citizenship and identification papers that Gilead requires them to have in order to get access to treatment.
''Gilead's programme introduces coercion and policing upon medical providers and may result in treatment interruptions for patients, leading to treatment resistance and failure. As far as is known to MSF, such a programme, motivated solely by commercial interests, is unprecedented,'' MSF said.
- See more at: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/pharma/20150128_hepatitis.html#sthash.REnGdQcH.dpuf
New treatments available in Alaska for Hepatitis C
ANCHORAGE –Hepatitis C is a disease that health officials say kills more Alaskans than HIV and AIDS, but according to state health officials, most of the people who have the virus don’t know it.
State Hepatitis prevention coordinator Ginger Provo says more than 16,000 Alaskans have been infected with the Hepatitis C virus since the state started keeping records in the mid 1990s. But Provo believes the real numbers are much higher. She said up to 75 percent of people who have the disease have not been diagnosed because many of them aren’t experiencing symptoms.
The one bright spot for the disease lies in its treatment. New drugs have been released recently that work better, faster and with fewer side effects than previous treatments, Provo says.
Read more...
State Hepatitis prevention coordinator Ginger Provo says more than 16,000 Alaskans have been infected with the Hepatitis C virus since the state started keeping records in the mid 1990s. But Provo believes the real numbers are much higher. She said up to 75 percent of people who have the disease have not been diagnosed because many of them aren’t experiencing symptoms.
The one bright spot for the disease lies in its treatment. New drugs have been released recently that work better, faster and with fewer side effects than previous treatments, Provo says.
Read more...
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Missouri to save $4.2 million by switching hepatitis C drug
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — State officials say Missouri’s Medicaid program will save an estimated $4.2 million in fiscal year 2016 by using a newer, cheaper drug to treat hepatitis C.
The state joined a group of 25 other states to receive rebates on Viekira from drug maker AbbVie. The state in most cases will provide that drug instead of Gilead Science’s Sovaldi in an agreement announced Monday.
The expensive treatment with Sovaldi, about $84,000 for a normal course, was cited as one driver of increased Medicaid costs for the state in 2015 by the state budget director.
Read more...
The state joined a group of 25 other states to receive rebates on Viekira from drug maker AbbVie. The state in most cases will provide that drug instead of Gilead Science’s Sovaldi in an agreement announced Monday.
The expensive treatment with Sovaldi, about $84,000 for a normal course, was cited as one driver of increased Medicaid costs for the state in 2015 by the state budget director.
Read more...
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.
Read more....
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....
Low Sodium Levels Increases Liver Transplant Survival Benefit in the Sickest Patients
Researchers report that low levels of sodium in the blood, known as hyponatremia, increase the risk of dying for patients on the liver transplant waiting list. The study published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, showed an increase in survival benefit for patients with hyponatremia and a Model for End Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score of 12 or more.
The MELD score measures the risk of death on waiting list. It is calculated using patient’s serum bilirubin, creatinine, and prothrombin time and is used by national organ allocation policy to determine the priority for a patient on the transplant waitlist. Patients who are most sick, with a high MELD score, are at the top of the waitlist. Previous research links low serum sodium, in combination with the MELD score, to increased waitlist mortality, prompting Organ and Procurement Transplant Network (OPTN) directors to approve a new policy that gives additional MELD score points (1 to 13 based on serum sodium value) to patients with hyponatremia.
Dr. Pratima Sharma, with University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor and lead study author notes, “While the OPTN serum sodium allocation formula may reduce deaths on the waitlist by enhancing access to donor organs, it is not clear if candidates with hyponatremia gain any survival benefit over patients with normal sodium levels. Our study examines if patients with low serum sodium prior to liver transplant have a greater survival benefit than patients without low serum sodium, all other things being equal.”
Using data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, researchers identified 69,213 candidates, 18 years of age or older, who were on the waiting list for liver transplant between January 2005 and December 2012. Liver transplant recipients were matched to waitlist candidates with the same MELD score and located in the same donation service area.
Findings indicate that the liver transplant survival benefit increased significantly with decreased serum sodium levels when MELD scores were 12 or more. The survival benefit was not affected by low sodium values for candidates with MELD of 11 or less. Dr. Sharma concludes, “Our results suggest that adjustment based on serum sodium for the purpose of the liver allocation process should be considered for those candidates with low sodium levels and a MELD score of at least 12. Health care providers should also alert liver transplant patients on the waiting list that low sodium levels could increase their mortality risk on the waitlist and may affect the expected survival benefit following liver transplantation."
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH, grants DK-088946 and 5R01 DK-70869) along with a research award from the American College of Gastroenterology.
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The MELD score measures the risk of death on waiting list. It is calculated using patient’s serum bilirubin, creatinine, and prothrombin time and is used by national organ allocation policy to determine the priority for a patient on the transplant waitlist. Patients who are most sick, with a high MELD score, are at the top of the waitlist. Previous research links low serum sodium, in combination with the MELD score, to increased waitlist mortality, prompting Organ and Procurement Transplant Network (OPTN) directors to approve a new policy that gives additional MELD score points (1 to 13 based on serum sodium value) to patients with hyponatremia.
Dr. Pratima Sharma, with University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor and lead study author notes, “While the OPTN serum sodium allocation formula may reduce deaths on the waitlist by enhancing access to donor organs, it is not clear if candidates with hyponatremia gain any survival benefit over patients with normal sodium levels. Our study examines if patients with low serum sodium prior to liver transplant have a greater survival benefit than patients without low serum sodium, all other things being equal.”
Using data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, researchers identified 69,213 candidates, 18 years of age or older, who were on the waiting list for liver transplant between January 2005 and December 2012. Liver transplant recipients were matched to waitlist candidates with the same MELD score and located in the same donation service area.
Findings indicate that the liver transplant survival benefit increased significantly with decreased serum sodium levels when MELD scores were 12 or more. The survival benefit was not affected by low sodium values for candidates with MELD of 11 or less. Dr. Sharma concludes, “Our results suggest that adjustment based on serum sodium for the purpose of the liver allocation process should be considered for those candidates with low sodium levels and a MELD score of at least 12. Health care providers should also alert liver transplant patients on the waiting list that low sodium levels could increase their mortality risk on the waitlist and may affect the expected survival benefit following liver transplantation."
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH, grants DK-088946 and 5R01 DK-70869) along with a research award from the American College of Gastroenterology.
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Access the full study on the Wiley Press Room here. (To access PDFs and embargoed stories you must be logged in to the Press Room before clicking the link. Request a login here.) Full citation: “Serum Sodium and the Survival Benefit of Liver Transplantation.” Pratima Sharma, Douglas E Schaubel, Nathan P Goodrich and Robert M Merion. Liver Transplantation; (DOI: 10.1002/lt.24063).
URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1022/lt.24063
Author Contact: Media wishing to speak with Dr. Sharma may contact Mary F. Masson at University of Michgan at mfmasson@med.umich.edu.
URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1022/lt.24063
Author Contact: Media wishing to speak with Dr. Sharma may contact Mary F. Masson at University of Michgan at mfmasson@med.umich.edu.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Fish Intake Tied to Liver Cancer Risk
The role of nutrition in liver cancer risk has been underrepresented in research, particularly compared to risk factors such as chronic infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV). Yet, some studies have indicated that n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 PUFA) may inhibit the promotion and progression stages of carcinogenesis. Fish is a source rich in n-3 PUFA, making it an ideal factor for analysis.
A new study in PLOS ONE reviewed published studies on the role of total fish intake and risk of primary liver cancer in case-control and cohort studies. Ten studies were analyzed, with all but one study hospital-based. A statistically significant inverse association between total fish intake and risk of liver cancer was observed; in comparing high vs. low intake, response models indicated that this risk was reduced by 18% and 6% per one serving/week increase, respectively. Although the exact mechanism of action is unknown, it is proposed that n-3 PUFA may inhibit cancer development via molecular biosynthesis, gene transcription and expression, and signal transduction or through its anti-inflammatory effect.
Even with these findings, residual or unknown confounding factors cannot be completely ruled out and not all studies controlled for risk factors such as HBV/HCV status. While this study supports a possible relationship between fish intake and liver cancer prevention, future well-designed studies are needed.
READ FULL ARTICLE
Source: http://www.empr.com/fish-intake-tied-to-liver-cancer-risk/article/394500/
A new study in PLOS ONE reviewed published studies on the role of total fish intake and risk of primary liver cancer in case-control and cohort studies. Ten studies were analyzed, with all but one study hospital-based. A statistically significant inverse association between total fish intake and risk of liver cancer was observed; in comparing high vs. low intake, response models indicated that this risk was reduced by 18% and 6% per one serving/week increase, respectively. Although the exact mechanism of action is unknown, it is proposed that n-3 PUFA may inhibit cancer development via molecular biosynthesis, gene transcription and expression, and signal transduction or through its anti-inflammatory effect.
Even with these findings, residual or unknown confounding factors cannot be completely ruled out and not all studies controlled for risk factors such as HBV/HCV status. While this study supports a possible relationship between fish intake and liver cancer prevention, future well-designed studies are needed.
READ FULL ARTICLE
Source: http://www.empr.com/fish-intake-tied-to-liver-cancer-risk/article/394500/
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