LOCAL STUDY FINDS SOME DRUG USERS CURED OF HEPATITIS C

Downtown Eastside Doctors Say Aggressive Treatment 'Encouraging'

A new study shows that up to 40 per cent of the approximately 4,500
Vancouver intravenous drug users with hepatitis C can be cured of the disease.

A group of doctors working with intravenous drug users in the Downtown
Eastside say up to 40 per cent carry one of two strains that respond well
to aggressive treatment and, if those patients stick to their medications,
they can be completely cured.

"It's very encouraging," said Dr. Stanley de Vlaming, one of several
doctors at the Pender Community Health Centre who worked on the study.

"We know that it's going to change individual lives ... Especially people
who are leaving addiction behind. They've managed to turn around their
lives and they're just thrilled to be able to treat their hepatitis C and
actually be cured of it."

De Vlaming and his colleagues -- including infectious disease specialist
Dr. Brian Conway -- are presenting their findings this week at the Canadian
Conference on hepatitis C.

They examined 257 people who are either current or former intravenous drug
users and who carry hepatitis C and, to their surprise, about 40 per cent
of those they tested carry one of two genotypes of the disease that respond
well to an aggressive six-month treatment.

(The North American average for the two genotype categories is about 25 per
cent. De Vlaming said it is still unknown why some parts of the world have
higher averages of the two genotypes.)

About 80 per cent of the people who carry one of the two more responsive
strains of the virus can be completely rid of it if they stick to the
treatment regime, which includes a weekly injection of interferon and a
twice-daily oral dose of ribavirin.

"People don't understand that hepatitis C -- with the new advances in the
medication and treatment -- can actually be cured," De Vlaming said.

"We can actually eradicate the virus from the body completely."

De Vlaming says the treatment is "a little bit arduous" and patients can
experience flu-like symptoms, depression, and anemia while on the
medication. But he noted the Pender health centre has counsellors and
physicians available seven days a week for those who are undergoing the
treatment.

Treatment has already begun on a small group of patients at the clinic, but
De Vlaming said the medications are only being given to those who are
recovering addicts involved in treatment.

"Patients really need to be stable from an addiction point of view. They
have to be engaged in some kind of addiction treatment before it makes
sense to offer them hepatitis C treatment," de Vlaming said.

"Because if they were to relapse with their drug addiction in a chaotic
way, they can get the hepatitis C back again."

Building on the success the clinic has had in treating HIV patients who are
also taking methadone, de Vlaming said it's easier for people to stick to a
drug regime if they already see a physician or pharmacist every day.

"It's one-stop shopping," he said. "Patients would come here to get their
hepatitis C treatment in conjunction with their addiction treatment and
when you pair the treatments together it makes it much more likely that
you're going to be successful."

Similar programs have been established with success in Baltimore, Oakland
and Germany, said Jason Grebely, a University of B.C. graduate student who
worked on the study.

"But it's one of the few in the world."

People with one of the other two genotypes of the virus can attempt
treatment, but the success rates are significantly lower. In the Downtown
Eastside study, the majority (60.7 per cent) of the patients carry a
genotype that has a 25-per-cent cure rate with treatment.

An estimated 250,000 Canadians are infected with hepatitis C and Health
Canada estimates one-third of them don't know they are infected.

On Saturday, federal Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew announced that Health
Canada is renewing for one year its hepatitis C prevention, support and
research program. The program will receive $10.6 million in funding that
was included in last week's federal budget.