MOSCOW, August 8 In medicine, significant progress has been made in the field of hepatitis C treatment: effective drugs have been developed to control a disease that was previously considered incurable and fatal. This was stated by a well-known Russian epidemiologist, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, chief researcher of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor Mikhail Mikhailov.
Hepatitis C is one of the main causes of cirrhosis and primary liver cancer. Transmission of the virus is possible through injecting drug use, during medical procedures and in some cases through sexual contact.
According to Mikhailov, in 2022, 1,094 patients with hepatitis C were registered in Russia. However, according to the expert, these statistics reflect only newly detected cases. If you look at the total, from 1.5 to 3 million chronically ill with hepatitis C live in our country.
» The hallmark of the «virus» is yellowness of the skin and sclera of the eyes, dark urine, discolored stools, general weakness. into a chronic form, which subsequently leads to serious complications, in particular to cirrhosis of the liver,” said the professor.
So, according to him, the term “gentle killer” appeared, in the sense that hepatitis C does not kill a person immediately, but after several years, or even decades. «What do you mean by this term? I don't think it's 'gentle'. A killer is always a killer. Moreover, he can't even be called a killer. In recent years, tremendous progress has been made in the treatment of hepatitis C,» the expert emphasized.
28 July, 09:00 >
Scientists still cannot create a vaccine against hepatitis C. This is due to the fact that, getting to a person, the virus changes very quickly: the body begins to fight against viral particles, their immunity suppresses, but during this time new particles have time to form. So far, alas, it has not been possible to keep up with him,» said Mikhail Mikhailov.
However, humanity has found a way out of this situation — drugs have been created that allow you to control the disease. «All the subtle mechanisms of virus replication have been studied. Drugs have appeared that affect certain stages of replication,» the scientist said.
“When we started using interferons for the treatment of hepatitis C, the effectiveness of which was about 30%, it seemed to us that this was already a breakthrough. But with the advent of drugs from the group of RNA polymerase inhibitors, treatment with interferons has lost its relevance. Modern drugs in 95-98% of cases give complete recovery. This is an amazing figure, which shows that a very effective way to treat hepatitis C has been found,» the scientist believes. type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.705720192970365″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»423″ data-source-sid=»istock-2023″ class=»lazyload» width= «1920» height=»1355″ decoding=»async» />
He said that when these drugs first appeared, there was a big conference in London on the study of the liver. A group of patients with chronic hepatitis C organized a flash mob: they wrapped themselves in gold foil and pretended to die from hepatitis, thereby demonstrating that new methods of treating hepatitis are too expensive and inaccessible.
«Now scientific and technological progress and the development of the pharmaceutical industry have led to a sharp reduction in the cost of these drugs, which allowed many countries to set the goal of global eradication of hepatitis C by 2030,” the scientist said, adding that this program was also approved in Russia, and they are actively working on it. According to him, if before a course of treatment cost more than 1 million rubles, now it is much cheaper.
August 1, 09:00
This material is part of a cycle of publications on the fight against hepatitis. In the following text, the scientist will explain why the hepatitis B gene was found in Beethoven's hair.