AM News- New Hep C Drugs a Bargain Compared to Alternatives and A Cup Of Joe

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

AM News- New Hep C Drugs a Bargain Compared to Alternatives and A Cup Of Joe

Can Coffee Treat Liver Disease?
Rowen K. Zetterman, MD / Medscape Gastroenterology
Coffee and Mortality More than 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed each day throughout the world. This requires harvesting and roasting 7 million tons of coffee beans every year.[1] Although coffee consumption varies from country to country, most Americans drink coffee daily. Despite early concerns about the deleterious effects of coffee on health, contemporary studies suggest that coffee is beneficial for many medical disorders, including Parkinson disease, diabetes mellitus, symptomatic gallbladder disease, stroke, and chronic liver diseases......

New Hep C Medicines a Bargain Compared to Alternatives
Drugmaker Studies Find a Bargain in $84,000 Medicine .... Older approaches required injections of two medicines, the immune-system booster interferon and the antiviral ribavirin, for as long as a year, causing side effects including flu-like symptoms and anemia. Combined with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Incivek, those treatments cost almost $200,000 per cure ....
Continue reading @ Bloomberg

Hepatitis C drugs not reaching poor
Ewen Callaway
15 April 2014
Campaigners in India have been calling for access to cheap hepatitis C treatments. The publication last week of the first treatment guidelines for hepatitis C virus (HCV), and the advent of drugs that can cure most infections of the virus, have left public-health researchers with a touch of déjà vu.

Three decades after wrestling to lower the cost of AIDS drugs (prices fell from about US$10,000 per patient per year in the 1990s to less than $100 in the mid-2000s), they are once again asking how expensive life-saving medicines can be made affordable for patients.
Continue Reading @ Nature News
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FAQ: The High Cost of Hepatitis C Drugs

WebMD asked experts and the drugmakers to address the most frequently asked questions about these two pricey ''game-changers'' and got some predictions about future treatment costs.

Related - Reducing the cost for Gilead's hepatitis C drug Sovaldi

Investment Commentary
J&J beats forecasts as new drugs shine, shares jump
"Strong pharmaceuticals results showcased a very strong 2014 start for J&J," said Morningstar analyst Damien Conover, referring to sales growth of almost 11 percent for prescription medicines in the quarter. He cited especially strong sales of immunology medicines and for the company's recently approved Olysio treatment for hepatitis C.

Big Pharma
Medicines agency sends report on Roche to EU Commission
The EMA previously said in November it had not uncovered any new safety issues connected with Roche's drugs as a result of the shortcomings in reporting adverse events.
EMA launched its probe into Roche in 2012 after a routine inspection found the firm had failed to properly assess tens of thousands of cases of possible adverse drug reactions, involving 19 drugs, several of which were for cancer.
Full Story

Related 2012
EMA Probes Roche For Reporting Failures

Liver Cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma: new advances in diagnosis, staging and treatment all predicted to improve patient outcomes
"Human hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide and the second most frequent cause of cancer-related death," said EASL's Scientific Committee Member Dr Helen Reeves Senior Lecturer & Honorary Consultant Gastroenterologist at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK.

"Because HCC is such an extremely diverse and heterogeneous disease, improving patient outcomes has proved a difficult undertaking. A number of existing therapeutic options have been subjected to rigorous study but have not shown any patient benefit. The findings from these HCC diagnosis, staging and treatment studies are important because they have the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes," Dr Reeves explained.
Full story @ Medical News Today

Tough liver cancer may be treated with immunotherapy
Significant new data presented at the International Liver Congress™ 2014 indicate that liver cancer (Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC)) may be treated by adoptive T-cell therapy.

More Than Drugs: The Continuum of HCV Care

Benjamin Young, MD, PhD, Fabienne Laraque, MD, PhD, Mario U. Mondelli, MD, PhD, Kosh Agarwal, MD, Jeffrey Kwong, DNP, MPH, ANP-BC

April 14, 2014
During the International Conference on Viral Hepatitis, held recently in New York, participants in a panel discussion titled "Strengthening the HCV Continuum of Care"^[1] convened afterward for a discussion. During the conversation, they discussed why the continuum of care is important in treating hepatitis C for both patients and providers....
Continue reading @ Medscape

Medscape Medical News, April 14, 2014
EASL Triple Combination Works in Cirrhotic Hepatitis C Patients
The all-oral antiviral regimen was highly effective and well tolerated in a hard-to-treat group of patients with hepatitis C genotype 1 and cirrhosis....

Continue reading @ Medscape

Single Daily Pill, No Ribavirin, Eliminated Hep C in 94–99% of Patients
Trials Advance Hunt for All-Oral HCV Tx
4/14/2014

LONDON -- A single-pill combination of two drugs for hepatitis C (HCV) had impressive results in two large studies, with cure rates ranging from 94% to 99%, researchers said.

Continue Reading @ Medpage Today

3D Combo Works in Cirrhotic HCV Patients, Too

4/14/2014

LONDON -- A drug combination with striking efficacy in relatively healthy hepatitis C patients had similar outcomes in patients with compensated cirrhosis, a researcher said.

Continue Reading @ Medpage Today

New At Healio

ION 2: Longer sofosbuvir/ledipasvir treatment may be unnecessary in previous failures
LONDON — Twelve weeks of treatment with the fixed-dose combination of Gilead’s sofosbuvir and ledipasvir — without ribavirin — may be sufficient to treat patients with hepatitis C virus who had failed previous therapies, according to findings presented here.

Nezam Afdhal, MD, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, presented findings for 440 patients from the phase 3 ION-2 study, which investigated the fixed-dose formulation of sofosbuvir (Sovaldi) 400 mg/ledipasvir 90 mg in treatment-experienced patients with genotype 1 disease. The study included four patient cohorts: those treated for 12 weeks with or without ribavirin and those treated for 24 weeks with or without ribavirin.
Full Story....

Sofosbuvir with GS-5816 shows pan-genotypic activity
LONDON — Combination therapy with sofosbuvir and the investigational compound GS-5816 yielded 12-week sustained viral response rates in patients with hepatitis C virus genotypes, according to findings presented by Gregory T. Everson, MD, of the University of Colorado in Denver.
Everson described GS-5816 as an HCV NS5A inhibitor that demonstrated pan-genotypic activity in a previous 3-day monotherapy study.

The current study is a phase 2 investigation of GS-5816 (Gilead) with sofosbuvir (Sovaldi, Gilead) in treatment-naive genotype 1 to 6 HCV-infected patients without cirrhosis.
Full Story..