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Category: HIV Treatment
Published on Friday, 29 December 2017 00:00
Written by Liz Highleyman
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As of the new year, HIVandHepatitis.com will be transferred to Smart + Strong, the publisher of POZ, Hep, Real Health, and the new Cancer Health magazines and websites. HIVandHepatitis.com will remain online as an archive for the near future but will not publish new content. HIVandHepatitis.com editor Liz Highleyman is now editor-in-chief of Cancer Health.
The HIV and viral hepatitis fields have undergone a remarkable evolution since Ronald Baker founded HIVandHepatitis.com in the late 1990s. Combination antiretroviral therapy had started to reduce mortality and many people with HIV began to regain their health. But the new drug "cocktails" were often hard to take, caused difficult side effects, and did not work for many people with long-term infection and extensive treatment experience. Treatment for hepatitis C typically involved a year-long course of interferon-based therapy which also came with challenging side effects and only cured the disease about half the time.
Today, most people living with HIV can be effectively treated with a single, well-tolerated daily pill, and those who start treatment promptly have a life expectancy matching that of HIV-negative people -- and a daily pill can now prevent HIV infection in the first place. Almost everyone with hepatitis C -- including formerly "hard to treat" people such as those with HIV/HCV coinfection -- can be cured with 2 or 3 months of well-tolerated direct-acting antivirals.
But the availability of effective new therapies does not mean access. Many people living with HIV and viral hepatitis -- both in the U.S. and worldwide -- have not yet been diagnosed or are not receiving treatment for reasons including ongoing stigma, criminalization, and the high cost of new drugs.
Cancer, too, appears to be on the brink of a breakthrough. New immunotherapies -- some of them based on advances in immunology pioneered by HIV researchers -- are starting to offer some people with cancer a new lease on life. But they do not yet work for all patients or all types of cancer, and their high cost will likely require new models of health care financing.
You can turn to POZ and Hep for the latest HIV and hepatitis news and conference coverage. Liz will continue to provide conference coverage for NAM's aidsmap and infohep, as well as San Francisco HIV news for the Bay Area Reporter. The @HIVandHepatitis Twitter account will become @HealthEdOnline, touching on a broader range of health topics.
Thank you for your interest in HIVandHepatitis.com over the years. Thanks also to all our contributors, especially our content collaborators at NAM.
Best Wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!
In contrast with hepatitis C, hepatitis B remains difficult to cure. Nucleoside/nucleotide antivirals like tenofovir (Viread or Vemlidy) can suppress HBV replication over the long term, but they usually do not lead to a cure, as indicated by loss of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). Researchers are exploring several approaches that target different steps of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) lifecycle, including the immune-modulating drug inarigivir (SB 9200), the nucleic acid polymer REP 2139, the RNA interference therapy ARB-1467, and the capsid assembly inhibitor JNJ-56136379.
10. Fatty Liver Disease a Growing Challenge
Progress has been slow in finding treatments for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NALFD) and its more severe form, non-alcoholic steatosis (NASH). As an effective vaccine reduces new hepatitis B infections, contemporary treatments easily cure hepatitis C, and the population grows more obese, fatty liver disease has become a leading cause of liver disease worldwide. There are currently no approved therapies, but researchers reported this year that theacetyl-CoA carboxylase inhibitor GS-0976 reduced liver fat accumulation and fibrosis in people with NASH in a Phase 2 study. In the meantime, as this and other candidates make their way through the development pipeline, a healthy diet and exercise have been shown to improve fatty liver disease.
