New medications to treat Hepatitis C, liver disease, and cirrhosis.

By: Joe Healy

An experimental drug from Vertex Pharmaceuticals helped cure more than 60 percent of patients with a tough-to-treat form of hepatitis C, according to data to be presented at a medical meeting that starts today.

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The results, eagerly awaited by Wall Street as well as by doctors, represent the highest cure rate yet reported for the condition — and the treatment was accomplished in half the usual time.
But Vertex might have to share a bit of the limelight with Romark Laboratories, a tiny privately held company that already sells a drug called Alinia that is used to treat diarrhea caused by certain parasites but that suddenly is emerging as a potential treatment for hepatitis C.
Researchers will report, escaping Wall Street's attention, that the drug Alina has aided in curing up to 79% of Hepatitis C patients, although their virus strain may have been weaker than that of which the drug Vertex cured.
The doctor said that there would be a skeptical reaction to to the unusual source. Emmet B. Keeffe, chief of hepatology at Stanford, who is a consultant to Romark. but Doctor! It is pretty exciting when you overcome your own initial skepticism, said Keeffe.”
Both developments, experts said, will need to be followed up by larger trials. Patients will feel that the progress being made is one of the most important factors. At least three million Americans are thought to be infected with the hepatitis C virus. The number of cases of liver cirrhosis and liver cancer caused by the virus is rising as well.

Alpha interferon and ribavirin combined together can cause debilitating side effects such as flulike symptoms, anemia and depression and this is the existing treatment. Type one Hepatitis C, is difficult and timely to treat -treatment often lasts a year- accounts for approximately 70 percent of cases in the United States.
Vertex, based in Cambridge, Mass., a publicly traded company is on an intense hunt for new drugs., is commonly recognized as the leader in it's field. Its pill, called telaprevir or VX-950, interferes with a viral enzyme. Most AIDS drugs work in this fashion, but this is a completely new approach to treat hepatitis C.
While Vertex has previously shown that telaprevir can sharply reduce virus levels in patients’ blood, the new data, to be presented at the meeting, an annual gathering of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston, is the first strong signal of how many patients could be cured.
In a midstage trial in the United States of 250 previously untreated patients, 61 percent of the people who received telaprevir in addition to the two standard drugs had no detectable virus in their blood 24 weeks after the end of the treatment, a Vertex executive said. Doctors consider that an effective cure.
12 weeks after treatment ended, approximately 65 percent of the 323 patients who were given the three-drug combination in the European trial presented no detectable virus.
There is a greater incidence for these 2 cure rates compared to the forty to fifty percent cure rate which is usually seen for type one hepatitis C when administering the normal drugs by themselves. Doctors also thought it was important that the treatment itself lasted only 24 weeks instead of 48. That denotes that for a brief period the side effects of interferon and ribavirin have to be tolerated by the patients.
"These are spectacular acheivements', exclaimed Doctor Ira M. Jacobson of weill cornell Medical college will present the results of the American trial and consultant to Vertex.
Wall Street anticipated these numbers. And many more people getting the three drugs stopped treatment because of side effects than those getting the standard therapy. The updates regarding the cure rates for the standard treatment aren't recorded yet.
The Romark data come from a study in Egypt of only 96 previously untreated patients. Alinia, or nitazoxnice, had also been tested for treating parasites.
In just 12 weeks after finishing their care of Alinia and two other standard drugs, 79 percent no longer had the virus. That in comparison with 43% within a control champion, which receives the usual treatment. Even though the overall treatment was for 48 weeks, the drugs were only given to the patient for 36 weeks.
Though it is rare in the US, the patients were all diagnosed with type 4 hepatitis C. Many experts believe that type four was easier to treat compared to type one. Romark, which is based in Tampa, Fla., has started a clinical trial in the US, and has already generated about $20 million in yearly revenue.
They found out by accident that the drug could be effective fighting hepatitis C. Liver Disease,Cirrhosis,Hepatitis C,HCV
Dr. Keeffe, who is researching how the Romark drug works, said that because Alinia is already on the market and appears to have few side effects, some doctors might prescribe it off label to treat hepatitis C. The daily requirement of two pills costs about $30.00. It is legal for doctors to prescribe medicines for uses other than those the Food and Drug Administration has approved, but a drug maker cannot promote its medicines for those off-label uses before formal approval.
“We’re all looking for better therapy for our patients, and this looks like a very benign thing to do,” Dr. Keeffe stated.
but Doctor! "It would be early" stated by Cornell's Jacobson.Hepatitis C,Liver Disease, HCV, cirrhosis
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