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Scientists at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray have a new cure for hepatitis C that they say is effective even for patients with advanced liver disease.
According to a press release from them, the treatment is an all-oral regimen that results in high cure rates following treatment.
Michael Charlton, MD, medical director of the Liver Transplantation Program, published the results of the nationwide study in the New England Journal of Medicine and in a press conference Friday.
“During the study, liver function was seen to stabilize or improve in the great majority of patients following treatment,” said Dr. Charlton, “Although longer follow-up is needed, the ability to achieve a high cure rate of hepatitis C in patients with advanced liver disease – and the observation of early stabilization and improvement of liver function – raises the possibility of decreasing the number of patients with hepatitis C who need liver transplantation.”
About 2.7 million people in the United States have a chronic hepatitis C virus infection, which can lead to liver failure or death.
“These are the sort of people who you would expect to go on to need liver transplantation at some point,” Charlton said of the study. “We achieved an overall cure rate of 90 percent across all the 260 something participants in the study, which was tremendous.”
Agencies/Canadajournal
