Hepatitis C

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.

Accused Libyan terrorist Abu Anas al Liby pleaded not guilty in federal court in New York on Tuesday to charges of conspiring to kill U.S. citizens in connection with the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. Al Liby , whose real name is Nazih Abdul Hamed Ruqai, entered his plea 10 days after being grabbed by American forces during a secret raid in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. In court he said he preferred to be referred to as Ruqai rather than by his nom de guerre. Ruqai entered the tightly secured courtroom in lower Manhattan with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Half of all patients who have tested positive for hepatitis C have not had follow-up testing to see if they are still infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means many people are living with the disease and not receiving the necessary treatment to prevent health problems, officials said this week. Hepatitis C is the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer and is the most common reason for liver transplants in the United States. The findings prompted the CDC to issue new guidelines urging healthcare providers to do a follow-up test on anyone who tests positive to an hepatitis C antibody test, which determines whether someone has ever been infected.

WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday for the first time approved a type of diagnostic test that will allow doctors to determine what kind of hepatitis C virus a chronically infected patient has, and tailor treatments based on that genetic type. No vaccine exists for the hepatitis C virus, or HCV, the most common blood-borne infection in the country. HCV infects about 3.2 million people in the U.S and leads to the death of 15,000 people annually. "Hepatitis C is known as the silent killer, as many of the symptoms go unnoticed," HIV and viral hepatitis expert Carol Brosgart, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, said in a statement.

By her own admission, Kristen Diane Parker cruised for empty operating rooms at the Denver hospital where she worked. The surgical technician would slip into the rooms and steal syringes of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller, replacing them with syringes she'd filled with saline, she later confessed to investigators. Parker, who has hepatitis C, had allegedly used those decoy syringes -- the source of transmission, authorities believe, for at least 23 Coloradans now infected with the liver-damaging disease.

An experimental antiviral drug that works by a different mechanism than existing drugs has been shown to suppress hepatitis C in chimpanzees and is already being tested in human clinical trials, researchers reported Thursday. The new agent is a so-called antisense drug that binds to RNA required by the virus for replication, preventing the virus from proliferating in the liver. Preliminary tests suggest that the drug, called SPC3649, has no toxic side effects, does not allow development of resistance -- which plagues other hepatitis drugs -- and has lasting effects after treatment has stopped.

Grammy-winning singer Natalie Cole has been diagnosed with hepatitis C, her publicist said in a statement Wednesday. Hepatitis C is a liver disease spread through contact with infected blood. The statement said the disease was revealed during a routine examination and was likely caused by her drug use years ago. Her physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Graham Woolf, said Cole, 58, has had a "terrific response to her medication and is now virus negative." He added that this "gives her an increased chance of cure."

Rock singer Steven Tyler says he was diagnosed with hepatitis C three years ago after having the illness for a long time without any symptoms. In an interview that was to air Tuesday on "Access Hollywood," the 58-year-old Aerosmith frontman said the infection was now "nonexistent" in his bloodstream after 11 months of treatment, including the drug interferon.

At least 81 people treated at a cancer clinic in Fremont have tested positive for hepatitis C in an outbreak that may have been caused by a contaminated vial of medicine, health officials said. Dr. Tom Safranek, the state epidemiologist, said poor medical practices at Dr. Tahir Javed's clinic may be to blame.

The Food and Drug Administration Monday approved a genetically engineered copy of a natural protein for treatment of a common, potentially deadly form of hepatitis. The FDA notified Schering-Plough Corp. of Kenilworth, N. J., that it may market its version of alpha interferon for use against chronic non-A, non-B hepatitis, also known as hepatitis C.

Why is it seemingly such a secret what the cause of death was of Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker"? With everything the public knows about his crimes, his weird beliefs and his many victims, for some reason this is being kept from open knowledge, at least for now. All authorities will say is that he died of natural causes. The tabloids and gossip sites are reporting that it was hepatitis C; a handful contend that he turned bright green shortly before his death. But why are people left to guess whether these reports are true rather than simply receive a short, official statement?

Half of all patients who have tested positive for hepatitis C have not had follow-up testing to see if they are still infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means many people are living with the disease and not receiving the necessary treatment to prevent health problems, officials said this week. Hepatitis C is the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer and is the most common reason for liver transplants in the United States. The findings prompted the CDC to issue new guidelines urging healthcare providers to do a follow-up test on anyone who tests positive to an hepatitis C antibody test, which determines whether someone has ever been infected.

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.

Oklahoma health officials on Saturday begin testing dental patients in the Tulsa area for a variety of blood-borne viruses that cause hepatitis and AIDS, a precautionary measure to deal with what officials call the largest such incident in the state's history. More than 7,000 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington will be receiving letters urging them to seek free blood tests for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. State officials have alleged a variety of unsafe practices, including using dirty equipment and allowing unlicensed workers to perform blood-related procedures, such as sedation, at clinics the dentist operated.

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.

California prison officials are failing to adequately treat an outbreak of hepatitis C that has infected thousands of inmates, a federal class-action lawsuit alleged Tuesday. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles on behalf of inmates including Kevin Jackson, who is at the California State Prison at Solano and alleges that he has not received proper treatment since being diagnosed with the disease in August 2007. Up to 40% of the 171,000 inmates in state prisons may be infected with hepatitis C, said Shawn Khorrami, an attorney for Jackson.

Schering-Plough Corp. said Wednesday it has received regulatory approval to sell two hepatitis C drugs in a combination package that's expected to become the new "gold standard" for treating a disease that affects 4 million Americans. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the New Jersey pharmaceuticals company can sell Peg-Intron, a longer-lasting form of its Intron A drug, in a single-package combination with its Rebetol drug from ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc.

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.

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.