Hepatitis in the News


Over 520 million people in the world have chronic viral hepatitis. Three hundred and fifty million have chronic hepatitis due to the hepatitis B virus and another 170 million have chronic hepatitis due to the hepatitis C virus. Over 6 million people in the United States have chronic viral hepatitis. An alphabet soup of hepatitis viruses have been identified thus far. Hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D, E, and G are all causes of hepatitis. Hepatitis viruses A and E do not cause chronic hepatitis. The most common viral causes of chronic hepatitis are hepatitis B and C. There is a vaccine for hepatitis B that is part of the routine immunization schedules in 100 countries around the world. Unfortunately, there is still no vaccine for hepatitis C viral infections.

Hepatitis is a swelling of the liver. The liver is a valuable organ in our bodies. It eliminates poisons from our bloodstream and also places important proteins in our blood that can transport foodstuffs to our cells. When our liver is sick we can get very sick. You can't live without it.

The following website called "The Hepatitis Place" is an excellent resource for hepatitis information. The pages are written without all the scientific mumbo jumbo (language from the scientific world). If you want to know more about viral hepatitis then this is the place to go.

Short news items concerning hepatitis:

A while back I wrote an article about a new treatment for chronic hepatitis due to hepatitis C virus. Schering-Plough received FDA-approval for this new combination therapy in May 1998. The product is called Rebetron and is a combination of a drug called ribavirin and Interferon alpha 2-B (Intron-A). Unfortunately, this new treatment may be too expensive for most patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infections.

If you have chronic viral hepatitis you may want to stop using ibuprofen containing pain relievers. A report in the American Journal of Gastroenterology stated that 3 chronic hepatitis patients had significant rises in their liver transaminases when they used ibuprofen. These liver transaminases indicate liver damage is occurring. When the ibuprofen was discontinued the patient's liver transaminases went back down. Maybe next time you need pain relief and you have chronic hepatitis try using acetaminophen rather than ibuprofen.

Take Care and Think Microbiologically!

The copyright of the article Hepatitis in the News in Microbiology is owned by Neal Rolfe Chamberlain. Permission to republish Hepatitis in the News in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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