New drugs OKd for treating hepatitis C

Betty Dufour didn't realize she carried the hepatitis C virus until deciding on a whim 11 years ago to be screened.

Dufour, 62, of Lindenhurst, learned she not only carried the virus but that she probably had been infected for years with a strain that until this month had been the most difficult to treat.

Dufour said she didn't know how or when she got hepatitis C. "Like so many other people infected with it, the important thing is not how you got it but how to get rid of it," she said.

Dufour is a candidate for one of two new medications that help to control the disease. Known as protease inhibitors, Incivek, approved on Tuesday and Victrelis, approved two weeks ago, block hepatitis C's ability to seize control of its host's DNA, which the virus uses to replicate itself.

Dufour's physician, Dr. Melissa Palmer, a Plainview liver specialist, is pleased that the new medications are available for treating hepatitis C.

Hepatitis C affects about 4 million people in the United States, but millions of cases go undetected because most people initially have only vague symptoms, such as fatigue or muscle aches. Many people learn they are infected when they develop a serious condition, such as cirrhosis or liver failure. Hepatitis C is passed through contact with contaminated blood -- most commonly through needles shared during illegal drug use.

"Hepatitis C has not gotten the awareness that HIV and multiple other diseases have gotten," Palmer said Wednesday. "When I first started my practice 20 years ago, 6 percent of people with hepatitis C could be cured. Now, with the two new drugs, we can probably cure 70 percent. But . . . people don't think they need to be screened."

Hepatitis C has become so prevalent on Long Island that doctors, nurses, social service experts and advocates earlier this year formed the Long Island Regional Hepatitis C Task Force. The group estimates 44,000 Long Islanders are infected and don't know it.

Dr. Brian Edlin, a hepatitis C researcher at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, Wednesday blamed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for seriously underestimating hepatitis C's prevalence. Writing in yesterday's edition of the journal Nature, he argued the CDC not only has underestimated hepatitis C among homeless people and the incarcerated, he contends the agency has not considered the prevalence of the virus among people in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

"There may be 6 to 8 million [nationwide] who have it and 75 percent don't know," Edlin said.

Hepatitis C, Palmer added, is the largest single reason for liver transplants in the United States.

Jennifer Horvath, spokeswoman for the CDC, said the agency takes hepatitis C infection seriously and is conducting a new study called BEST-C, which involves screening anyone born between 1945 and 1965 for the virus. If the study helps turn up substantial new cases, the agency could possibly recommend random screening of baby boomers.

Dufour, a member of a Long Island support group for people with hepatitis C, said: "Most of the people in my support group are my age. I suppose it's a baby boomer disease."