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Nanoparticle Completely Eradicates Hepatitis C Virus
Diggester writes "While Americans worry every year about getting a flu shot or preventing HIV/AIDS, the deadlier silent killer is actually Hepatitis C, killing over 15,000 people yearly in the U.S. since 2007 — and the numbers continue to increase as the carriers increase in age. While there is no vaccine, there is hope in nanoparticle technology. The breakthrough came from a group of researchers at the University of Florida, creating a 'nanozyme' that eliminates the Hep C 100% of the time; before now, the six-month treatment would only work about half the time. The particles are coated with two biological agents, the identifier and the destroyer; the identifier recognizes the virus and sends the destroyer off to eliminate the mRNA which allows Hep C to replicate." Reader Joiseybill adds a link to coverage in the IEEE Spectrum, and points out that the 100 percent success rate, while encouraging, is so far only in the lab.
"While Americans worry every year about getting a flu shot or preventing HIV/AIDS, the deadlier silent killer is actually Hepatitis C, killing over 15,000 ..."
The flu kills each year an average number of 25000-36000 people in the US, depending on the statistics.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm
So take everyone to the lab for treatment. Duh.
would have been nice for mice to be mentioned in the summary since it appears only to apply to them. lucky dogs
work in progress
Well, there are more than a hundred discoveries like these that demonstrated effectiveness of curing the uncurables in the past decade. Of those which went through the testing in man, well, maybe 2 or 3...
Back then, avastin, glivec and so on were expected to be magical cures for cancers.. now they exist only as expensive life-prolonging (with or without quality) therapy and only for those who are rich.
That is a cynical idea, ok drug companies might prefer long term treatments to cures. But for insurance companies and nationalised health care systems cost is more important.
luckily the FDA can only rule on drugs for Americans in the USA. In Ireland I got prescribed a drug treatment here that was approved eventually by the FDA. I'm very happy for it being available to me sooner rather than later, and i am sure Americans are now seeing the benefits now they can have it too.
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Duh. The test on rats so far showed no side-effects which makes it better than radiation or incinerating the rats to kill the virus.
But it uses the word "nano" so it must work.
The previous treatment with ribavirin and interferon for one year had a 50% success rate. The newer six month treatment with the addition of Incivek for three months has over 75% rate. Since Incivek has only been on the market for about a year, that success rate is not as precise as it will be.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
I wish people would get that chemistry != nanotechnology.
Our world is filled with nanoscale molecules, including many that we designed and created, but the word "nanotechnology" was specifically coined to describe building things by the manipulation of individual atoms.
However a 97% effective life-long treatment will be "safe" and approved.
Reduce the dosage until its only 97% effective, then rinse -n- repeat every 6 months or whatever as the virus regains a foothold.
Its a recipe for developing treatment resistance, but that just means more R+D profit, so...
Remember homeopathic stuff doesn't work. At some dilution the treatment effectiveness will drop from 100% to 97%.
Also you can mix stuff in as a "manufacturing byproduct" if necessary to encourage long term treatment WRT the byproducts. Maybe lead or mercury resulting in semi-permanent long term IV EDTA therapy.
An alternative is to engage the finance department with a fairly trivial question, "Assume a monthly symptomatic treatment income of $500/month is obtainable... what would it cost to purchase a lifetime annuity yielding $500/month? Oh, $X you say? Well we can price the one time cure at $X*1.1 and it'll be all good"
That industry might be corrupt and evil. But they're (unfortunately) not stupid. We're not dealing with real estate agents or used car salesmen here.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The problem there is that after a few rounds you're producing virii which are immune to the treatment, which rapidly becomes worthless.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Add "on the internet" and they can patent it with no questions asked.
Hepatitis C++? Hepatitis C#?
Objective Hepatitis C. *shudders*
Dress up like a horse and go to a vet and you can get gene therapy and stem cells treatments.
Which is why if you really want first class medical treatment you don't get it in the USA. Even routine things such as stitches at the hospital can easily run you $500 without insurance in the US at even a bottom-barrel hospital. Go to Mexico at a top-tier, first class hospital and you can get your hand stitched up for under $50 without insurance.
Not to mention that nearly every other country (even including those in Europe!) have more access to cutting edge treatments.
Unfortunately, most Americans won't think to really look abroad because they think that the US is the most advanced nation in the world and that they can really get the best care there.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The problem there is that after a few rounds you're producing virii which are immune to the treatment, which rapidly becomes worthless.
Would this not be like evolving a virus that is immune to bleach or autoclaves?
i.e. because it is attacking the RNA itself you would just alter the code that the marker is searching for?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
I wish people would get that chemistry != nanotechnology.
Our world is filled with nanoscale molecules, including many that we designed and created, but the word "nanotechnology" was specifically coined to describe building things by the manipulation of individual atoms.
Unless you count crystals like diamond as one big molecule... I am pretty sure every molecule is nanoscale. Even .
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Same here in Canada. We're taught from an early age that we have the best health care system in the world, and everyone here believes it.
I'll keep this short, but we had a baby here in Canada and then we had our second child in Mexico, both were Cesarean. The care we received in Mexico was 100 times better than what we got in Canada. No waiting, no crappy attitude from nurses and doctors.. We had complications here in Canada but not in Mexico, and I believe that's due to a better doctor doing a more careful job. Not to mention the hospital was like a 5 star hotel, with a private room, big screen tv, etc.
You pay for the service there, but it's a real eye opener to realize how crappy our health care system is back home in comparison. So much for 1st world vs 3rd world.
Well if one of the pharma-mega-corps has the patents on the HepC treatment and a different company comes up with the cure...they'd love to make some money and cut off a competitor's money supply wouldn't they?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yep, its really depressing the level of service you get compared to the money you pay in the US, and I'm really not sure why. I don't know if it is the insurance mentality (I don't really have to pay this bill, my insurance will cover it) or whether its the lack of competition or something else. But hospitals (and even doctors offices) in the US are traditionally depressing and crappy. You get next to no service, you're lucky if you get a private room, they are often dirty, and the only amenities you get are free wi-fi (if you're lucky) and a tiny CRT television with a handful of channels.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Maybe health insurance companies should start buying pharma companies? That might change a few things.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Good point, it would all come down to how easy it is to adapt the marker/killer code.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
At least you have options with visible tradeoffs. You can get the free treatment at home, though the quality will suffer, or you can get expensive treatment abroad, and the quality will be higher, but so will the price tag and travel costs (not to mention the viability of traveling via plane if you're going into labor/labour)
Here in the US, the default option is expensive, poorly staffed, and the work is mediocre. Not much of an "Option A"
This signature is false.
This is non-news. Cures which work in cell cultures are a dime a dozen. This is at least six years from going to market, and has >95% chance to fail as an actual drug.
The real progress are the recently introduced, FDA-approved treatments by Vertex, Merck (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/us-vertex-idUSTRE74M3I320110523) and soon Gilead (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-bristolmyers-hepatitis-idUSBRE83I0T920120419). These are really fantastic advances in the treatment of that disease.
It goes for dental work too. If you need something particularly expensive, like a dental immplant, you could save money doing it in Barbados rather than the U.S. even with the airfare and hotel bill. (And yes, they have good dentistry there.)
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I got three stitches in a hospital 2 years ago. $2,000 with insurance discount (without reaching my deductible). And afaik there's no way to shop around for a cheap hospital, they don't post prices.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
Jenny McCarthy is no doubt torn right now, between her hatred of vaccines and the desire to eradicate the HepC she no doubt has.
Long signatures suck.
But if the treatment fails you get shot.
If insurance companies owned pharma companies. You might find a particular drug is only available to people on that insurance companies plans or maybe available at an inflated price.
Insurance companies are not in the business of helping anyone. Every claim is a loss to them. You would need a non-profit company or state funded pharma, not impossible in some parts of the world but maybe illegal if the recent story where the NSA might be in trouble for developing their own software is illegal, then it's highly likely that there is similar provisions for the development of drugs.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
If we can program these nano cells to attack, all these, including aids and cancer...that would be the real deal right there....!
I wonder if you can reprogram it to remove old cells so as not to allow aging to happen too?
Maybe in a rural setting, if you are in a larger city with some competition between hospitals, rooms can be very nice. We have 3 major hospitals in our area and while one appears to have a culture that encourages shortcuts and crappy service, the other two give excellent care.
Cheap storage VM.
There is only doom the way you are going. Stop hinking now, and we may keep our cars. You know, everybody loves cars (to the point of insisting to spend endless hours inside them every day), and if you go that way, well, you'll discover that we should stop spending money on the death machines^W^W i mean... cars.
Also, everybody knows that cars are the single product that moves the economy nowadays. If we stopped manufacturing them, unenployment would rise to unprecedented levels (by the way, did you already throwed a stone in your windows today? You know, you have a duty to make the economy grow), and everybody will become poor.
So, for everybody's sake, stop thinking!
Rethinking email
He describes perfectly well what will be going on behind the scenes. People who used to work for big pharmaceutical industries are working in the FDA and former FDA people are working in the industry. So a cure has only got a chance if a big industry player can profit from it - and more than they could from providing life-long treatment.
I like my spaghetti with source.
I read an article that said the worst thing that ever happened to Canadian health care was for us to be situated next to the USA. Our system is leaps and bounds ahead of theirs, but because that's the metric by which we compare everything, we end up with a lousier system than somewhere like Mexico, or what they have in Scandinavia.
A friend of mine went to Holland to visit family. For her to get an ultrasound booked (because her family can't be back in Canada for the birth) was faster and cheaper in Holland--where she doesn't have insurance--than it would be here. AND when they found out that she was in from Canada, they threw in some freebie scans. Just like that.
I appreciate our system, I really do. It's taken care of me in some bad accidents, and when my family has had trouble (cancer, old age, heart disease) they've gotten really good care, without the rest of the family worrying about how we're going to live while paying for treatment. But being better than a place that has so many demonstrable, objective deficiencies doesn't make our system the best.
While interesting, this research is far too late to be remotely useful. There are multiple Phase III trials currently ongoing with new generations of HCV treatments - at least one of these will become the de facto standard of treatment for HCV cures in the future, with REAL human cure rates of > 90% if not 100%, depending on genotype and statues re: failed previous treatment courses of course. That puts them about 8 years ahead of these guys. Interesting science though, and I wish them luck.