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Contact: Daniela Hernandez dfh2101@columbia.edu 310-991-2391 Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health In a study to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report the discovery of a novel hepatitis C-like virus in dogs. The identification and characterization of this virus gives scientists new insights into how hepatitis C in humans may have evolved and provides scientists renewed hope to develop a model system to study how it causes disease. The research was conducted at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the University...

A new kind of compound to treat hepatitis C is showing promise in early clinical trials. The treatment, being developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), was found to be very effective at lowering viral load, both in a Phase I trial published this week in Nature, and in early results of a Phase IIa trial presented at the European Association for the Study of the Liver's annual meeting in Vienna last week.Current HCV therapy is not ideal. The standard treatment is with an interferon and the antiviral agent ribavirin, but is only effective in around half of all patients and is plagued with...

Institute of Medicine makes recommendations to prevent HBV and HCV infectionsA recent report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) confirmed that 3.5 to 5.3 million people (1-2 % of the U.S. population) have chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections. Despite efforts by federal, state and local government agencies to control and prevent these diseases, they remain a serious public health concern. The major factor impeding efforts to control HBV and HCV is lack of knowledge and awareness among health care providers, social service professionals, members of the public, and policy-makers. The full IOM report is...

LAS VEGAS — Amid the alphabet soup of hepatitis virus types, the one that should most concern physicians these days is hepatitis C. “This is going to be the big virus in the next 20 years in the U.S.,” Dr. Marsha H. Kay predicted at a meeting sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In fact, at a recent national forum on chronic viral hepatitis, several experts emphasized the need for a new, coordinated national response to screen and treat hepatitis C viral infections in the United States because too many infected patients live unaware of their disease and go...

Researchers have come up with a completely new way to thwart hepatitis C: Go after the host, not the virus. Genetically silencing a small piece of RNA in chimpanzees effectively suppresses the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a new study shows--and the virus appears unable to become resistant to the treatment. But experts caution that the approach needs to be scrutinized carefully for side effects. New drugs against HCV are badly needed. More than 170 million people worldwide have contracted the virus, which is transmitted primarily via injection drug use and through the transfusion of blood and blood products. The virus...

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Virginia hospital has asked more than 300 former patients to come in for blood tests because a nurse suspected of infecting patients with hepatitis in Texas worked there last year. Retired Army Capt. Jon Dale Jones, 45, was arrested this month in Miami on federal charges of assaulting three patients and possession of a controlled substance by fraud. Federal prosecutors said they believe Jones spread hepatitis in 2004 at an El Paso military hospital by diverting fentanyl -- a powerful painkiller often used for anesthesia -- from patients to himself. At least 15 military service...

Stephen Balsamo felt like his body was on an assembly line. He and his fellow recruits lined up back-to-belly at the Fort Dix clinic that day in 1973 and, as they filed by, the men were given a half-dozen shots in each arm with a device called a jet gun injector. The 54-year-old Boonton man thought little of it at the time. The gantlet was just another thing to endure at the start of a three-year hitch in the Army. But Balsamo is now convinced that was the day the Army exposed him to tainted blood and infected him with...

It is a health crisis of alarming proportions. Up to nine million Egyptians have been exposed to hepatitis C, and tens of thousands will die each year unless they receive a liver transplant. Health authorities are taking steps to stop the spread of the blood-borne virus, but must also contend with higher liver failure mortality rates as the disease advances in those infected decades ago. "The prevalence of hepatitis C is not growing, but the impact of an outbreak in the 1960s and 70s is appearing now as a clinical outcome," says Dr. Mostafa Kamal Mohamed, professor of community medicine...

EDITORIAL OBSERVER Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent time in prison. The prison system now releases an astonishing 650,000 people each year - more than the population of Boston or Washington. In city after city, newly released felons return to a handful of neighborhoods where many households have some prison connection. The so-called prison ZIP codes have more in common than large populations of felons or children who grow up visiting their mothers and fathers in jail. These neighborhoods are also public health disaster areas and epicenters of blood borne diseases like hepatitis C and AIDS....

Intravenous-drug users who spread disease by sharing dirty needles and engaging in unprotected sex are responsible for more than a third of all the AIDS cases in the United States and more than half of the new cases of hepatitis C. Addicts will continue to drive these epidemics until the country takes a more enlightened approach to drug treatment. That means discarding the laws that criminalize needle possession because such laws encourage addicts to share needles. It also means developing large-scale treatment programs that admit addicts right away instead making them wait months or years. A blueprint for such a...

The US military has begun development of an ultra-high speed weapons system that would enable targets virtually anywhere on Earth to be hit within two hours of launch from the continental US. Ten companies have been given grants by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon for six-month "system definition" studies. If the Pentagon likes the results, a three-year design and development phase will begin. The ultimate aim, slated for around 2025, is a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) that can take off from a conventional runway in the US and strike targets up to 16,700 kilometres (10,350...

The United States is planning to build an unmanned hypersonic aircraft capable of striking any target in the world within two hours. The initial description of the concept - called the "reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle" (HCV) - has recently been placed on the website of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). A conference of companies interested in the project is to be held soon. The idea is that the HCV would take off from a conventional airfield in the continental United States carrying a 12,000 pound (5,500 kilogram) payload. This payload would be made up from a variety of...