Hepatitis

Not only can bedbugs harbor MRSA, they could potentially, just maybe, spread the drug-resistant bacteria, researchers – and resulting headlines — are speculating. The thought is a scary one, but not much different than what we already knew about the threat from these generally nocturnal parasites . It’s certainly plausible that a blood-sucking bug can spread blood-transmitted diseases, but scientists haven’t found much evidence they do so. Here’s the low-down on what’s known on bedbugs and disease.

Dozens of Oklahoma dental patients have been diagnosed with hepatitis C and at least one case of HIV, state health officials said Thursday, four weeks after finding a multitude of health code violations, including rusty tools, at a dental practice in Tulsa. Authorities said they were still determining whether the infections were connected with unsanitary practices at W. Scott Harrington's two offices in Tulsa and a Tulsa suburb, which prompted officials to notify 7,000 of the dentist's patients.

Thanks for your May 30 editorial about hepatitis C in the U.S. Because veterans, especially Vietnam veterans, have a higher rate of hepatitis C than the population in general, the Department of Veterans Affairs takes the issue very seriously. Based on our studies, VA officials estimate that approximately 8% to 10% of all veterans have hepatitis C, compared to less than 2% among the general population. This is an alarming rate, which has prompted the VA to initiate nationwide programs for testing, counseling and treating veterans with hepatitis C. Contrary to what the editorial implies, the VA currently will test any veteran who believes he or she has been exposed to hepatitis C. We will treat any veteran who tests positive.

Hundreds of dental patients in Tulsa were screened for hepatitis and HIV on Saturday at a special testing clinic for those who might have been exposed to disease by what authorities called the unsafe practices of a local dentist. More than 7,000 current and former patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington began receiving letters this week urging them to be tested at no cost. The first free clinic was held Saturday and 420 patients were screened, according to the Tulsa Health Department.

A major advance in treating hepatitis C appears to be on the horizon. Researchers reported Wednesday that combining two antiviral medications was effective in stopping the infection in some patients who were not helped by the traditional treatment. Progress in fighting hepatitis C infection is of high importance because millions of Americans have the virus. However, the standard treatment with the medication interferon, while effective in many people, is linked to severe side effects.

A man hospitalized with complications from a hepatitis A outbreak that has infected more than 185 people died, hospital officials said. The man, one of five people hospitalized in the outbreak, died less than a week after health officials announced the cases of the infectious liver disease, which were apparently linked to a Chi-Chi's restaurant at a mall near Pittsburgh. Food-borne outbreaks of hepatitis A generally involve uncooked food handled by people with hepatitis A.

Thousands of Shanghai residents have been struck down by a hepatitis epidemic that has crowded city hospitals and triggered "public panic," the official media said Tuesday. More than 6,000 people suffering from hepatitis A have been admitted to hospitals and thousands more are waiting for beds, and patients have been moved into factories and schools, the newspaper China Daily said. About 3,500 extra beds have been set up in warehouses and corridors.

The U.S. Army has carried out a promising early test of the first vaccine against hepatitis E, a form of the liver-attacking disease that sickens many Asians and can spread to soldiers or other Western visitors. The vaccine was 96% effective for Nepalese army soldiers who took all three doses, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hepatitis has broken out at settlements for Kurds in an Iranian border province hosting half a million refugees, the Iranian news agency IRNA said Thursday. It quoted Health Minister Reza Malekzadeh as saying in Bakhtaran province: "The disease has been brought under control with measures taken in the past few days." He gave no other details but said the refugees' condition was "grave."

Thirteen centuries ago, Pope Zacharias quarantined jaundiced patients to stop liver sickness from spreading through Rome. But despite the fact that researchers (and a pope) have long thought some forms of liver disease -- namely hepatitis -- to be contagious, it took centuries of investigation before a team of scientists discovered the cause of infection. Even then, it was largely by chance.

In findings that may represent a breakthrough in the treatment of hepatitis C infection, researchers have reported that weekly injections of an experimental medication that denies the virus a foothold in the liver substantially drove down subjects' viral loads after five weeks of treatment. Fourteen weeks after the injections ended, researchers found that five of 18 infected subjects getting the medication's higher doses showed no detectable trace of infection. The new study describes a treatment approach that could outsmart the hepatitis C virus's penchant for developing resistance to existing drugs and "provide curative therapy to a large proportion" of the 170 million people in the world who are infected with the virus, wrote Harvard University physician Dr. Judy Lieberman and Dr. Peter Sarnow of Stanford University.

WASHINGTON - A nomadic medical technician who wandered in and out of hospital jobs from the desert Southwest to New England was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in connection with a Hepatitis C outbreak that infected more than 30 patients at a New Hampshire hospital with the potentially life-threatening disease, and possibly 4,000 more in Pennsylvania, Maryland and other states. David M. Kwiatkowski, a  33-year-old former radiology tech, was charged with seven counts of tampering with a consumer product and seven counts of obtaining controlled substances by fraud.

WASHINGTON - A nomadic medical technician who held hospital jobs from Arizona to New England has been indicted in connection with a hepatitis C outbreak that infected more than 30 patients at a New Hampshire hospital and exposed thousands of others in Pennsylvania, Maryland and other states. David M. Kwiatkowski, a 33-year-old former radiology technician, was charged Wednesday by a federal grand jury with seven counts of tampering with a consumer product and seven counts of obtaining controlled substances by fraud, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Dr. R. Palmer Beasley, an epidemiologist whose pivotal research on hepatitis B in Taiwan first linked the virus to liver cancer, died Saturday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Houston. He was 76. His death was announced by the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health in Houston, where he had been dean from 1987 to 2005. Beasley made his mark in the 1970s with a series of studies that proved the cancer link and also discovered how Asian children were infected with hepatitis B during childbirth by their mothers who were carriers.

I consider myself to be a fortunate person. I have a good education, a great job and excellent health insurance. I am a baby boomer who has aged reasonably well and can look forward to a fairly comfortable retirement. I am also fortunate because I was diagnosed with hepatitis C by a proactive and knowledgeable doctor in the late 1990s and had the opportunity to be treated and cured. The odds are that if I had not been diagnosed and treated, I would be on a liver transplant list right now, have liver cancer or even be dead from this disease.

Silymarin, an extract of milk thistle widely used around the world for treating liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus, provides no more benefit than a placebo, researchers reported this week. Some estimates are that as many as a third of the estimated 3.2 million Americans with hepatitis C -- as well as many more millions around the world -- are consuming the drug in an effort to alleviate their symptoms. The new research by a team headed by Dr. Michael W. Fried of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine suggests that they are simply wasting their money.

Communion and hepatitis A are rarely mentioned in the same sentence. But health officials in New York are concerned that parishioners at a Long Island church who took Communion on Christmas Day may have been exposed to hepatitis A. Church-goers in attendance that day are being urged to get a hepatitis A vaccine shot. A statement issued Monday by the Nassau County Health Department to Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park said: "Individuals may be at risk if they received Communion during the 10:30 a.m. and 12 noon masses on December 25, 2010.

A hepatitis A outbreak that has killed three people and sickened nearly 600 others who ate at a Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant probably was caused by green onions from Mexico, health officials said. How the onions became tainted remains unclear.

More than a quarter of L.A.'s homeless adults are infected with the hepatitis C virus, and nearly half of them don't know it, UCLA researchers reported this week. Almost none of them have been treated for the infection, suggesting that the public health system could face a major financial burden as their infections progress to cirrhosis of the liver and end-stage liver disease. The hepatitis C virus, known as HCV, represents a potentially lethal infection. It is transmitted through the blood, primarily by needles used for injecting drugs.