This isn't the Dr. Oz show or some nutrition site selling Vitamin D supplements or whatever the big Superfood/Miracle Vegetable craze is this week, 'miracle' is a bit of a dirty word in science. But when it fits, you have to use it.
And Hepatitis C may have gotten its miracle.
It's not well known, Hepatitis C does not have the PR of diseases like AIDS, but 3 million people have it, many of them Baby Boomers. Some got it of their own volition, using skin poppers or needles for drugs, but hygiene was a different beast 50 years ago and it was also possible to get it just by going to the dentist.
In 2011, Dr. Josh Bloom, Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the American Council on Science and Health in New York City, had predicted big things from Abbott regarding hepatitis C. And a new study shows he was right.
In a Phase III clinical trial, 100 percent of patients who were infected with genotype 1b—the most difficult strain of the virus to treat—attained a sustained virological response (SVR) following treatment with ViekiraPak, a combination of two different HCV replication inhibitors.
Sustained virological response means the absence of detectable hepatitis C six months after the end of treatment. You read that right, this is a cure. The virus does not come back. That is terrific news because hepatitis C is actually difficult to treat - yet now possible to cure.
Miracle, indeed.
