Miracle cure for Hepatitis
Published: July 9, 2007
A WONDER cure for killer liver disease Hepatitis C was revealed yesterday — giving hope to millions of sufferers.
Scientists made the breakthrough by combining two drugs that keep the condition under control in its early stages.
The double therapy was tested on more than 1,000 patients — and 99 per cent were free of the disease after just SIX MONTHS.
Hepatitis C is transmitted through blood and destroys the liver. It affects 200,000 in Britain — many hit by infected blood transfusions in the Eighties.
Body Shop founder Anita Roddick this year revealed she had contracted the disease in 1971 via a transfusion after giving birth. Other sufferers catch it from contaminated tattooing and piercing equipment, or drug use.
Until now the only long-term treatment has been a liver transplant.
But the researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in America said their 1,000 patients were still free of the disease, even seven years after the tests started. Study leader Professor Mitchell Shiffman said the results meant the combined drugs could be called a “cure”.
He added: “It is rare in the treatment of life-threatening viral diseases that we can tell patients they may be cured.
“Today we are able to help some patients effectively put their disease behind them.”
His team will now expand the trials on a wider range of patients.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: