Hepatitis C, drug resistance, and personalized medicine

A huge boost to treatment for the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is on the horizon, as two pharmaceutical companies are set to release new drugs to market.  And with development complete, the marketing war begins.

Forbes reports that Merck has won FDA approval for Victrelis, and the drug, which costs $35,000 for the course of treatment, will hit pharmacies’ shelves by next week, along with the company’s targeted marketing campaign.

But Merck is on the clock, since a favorable approval from the FDA expected on rival drug, Incivek, manufactured by Vertex Pharmaceuticals by the end of the month.

A quick look into the Phase III studies conducted by Merck and Vertex reveals that both HCV drugs are protease inhibitors intended to be given in combination with other currently available treatments. And a paper published this past February in Science Translational Medicine provides a plausible explanation why, going forward, choosing the proper drug cocktail for each patient will be crucial.

It seems that HCV can rapidly mutate, perhaps even faster than HIV or Hepatitis B, and successfully combating this disease will require substantial efforts in personalized medicine:

Overall, this study predicts that rapid emergence of HCV protease inhibitor resistance in patients, particularly those with genotype 1a infection and with high viral loads, is expected. Combination therapies of direct antivirals with/without IFN+/-RBV would be promising to combat drug resistance. However, as with HIV, they need to be chosen carefully and with regard to both preexisting and on-treatment generated drug-resistant variants.

  By Brian Mossop

Entertainment: CELEBRITY TATTOO ARTIST IS HIV POSITIVE

Allhotnewz.blogspot.com just received a disturbing report. Apparently a VERY POPULAR British tattoo artist has caught the monster. But get this, dude is REFUSING to tell the people who he tatts up of his status.

For all those interested, the dude lives in Britain and his name is Henry Hate. Here’s how London’s Sun newspaper is reporting it:

Henry — who runs the Prick Tattoo and Piercing parlour in Shoreditch, East London — said he always wore gloves while etching with single-use needles.

He went on: “I don’t tell the general public.

“But some of my close customers who I have had for years are very aware.”

They include recovering drug addict Winehouse, 25, but he had not told junkie rocker Doherty, 30.

Henry explained: “We don’t have discussions like me and Amy have … There are a few celeb clients who have known for a while — but I don’t tell all my friends.”

We ain’t too sure how we feel about this. It seems like dude is taking precautions to not spread that package around. So maybe he’s right about not having to tell…

Health: HIV patient cured with Bone Marrow Transplant

What would you call it-a miracle,magic or a bonus life gifted by the Almighty?It could be anything,but the fact is the patient is still in better condition now than he was a few months back.

As we know until now, HIV has no cure and has led to the deaths of over 25 million people.But Dr. Gero Hütter, 39--a brilliant physician in Germany , is the new hero who found out an AIDS cure, and the most astonishing thing is he is not an AIDS expert. He treated a 42-year-old American living in Berlin who had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant.

After a successful surgery, the patient is recovering but seems to be free from AIDS as well. Doctors have not been able to detect the HIV virus that causes AIDS in his blood stream for more than 600 days even after the patient stopped taking AIDS medications. The doctors said when a patient stops taking AIDS medication; the virus generally regenerates very rapidly, within weeks or days. However, they were amazed not to see any of it in the patient.The Doctor himself was surprised seeing the result when he replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with those from a donor who had a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

If this method is successful for other patients, this type of gene therapy technique will be much better than the regular AIDS treatment which is quite expensive for patients and if this therapy technique works, then it will save thousands of lives.