Vaccine blunts virus's sting.(hepatitis C virus)

2002 NOV 27 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The livers of people infected with hepatitis C could be saved if one of a handful of experimental vaccines lives up to its early promise.

Innogenetics of Belgium has reported that its therapeutic vaccine - a vaccine designed to treat a disease rather than prevent it - stops and sometimes even reverses liver damage in hepatitis C patients. The company is one of at least five developing therapeutic vaccines for hepatitis C.

Hepatitis C is transmitted via blood - through transfusions, when drug users share needles and even from tattoo needles. The first symptoms are mild, such as fatigue. But in around a third of people affected, the liver becomes scarred after a few decades and stops functioning properly, causing weakness, exhaustion and jaundice. In some cases, the liver fails completely or becomes cancerous. The disease is one of the commonest reasons for a liver transplant.

"The typical patient is a woman 60 years old who 25 years ago got infected with a blood transfusion following a cesarean or some other operation," said Frank Hulstaert, head of clinical research at Innogenetics.

Even long-term treatments with the latest drugs cure just half those infected at most and have serious side effects, including severe depression, which many find intolerable.

Innogenetics' vaccine is based on one of the proteins found on the virus's coat. In the trial 24 patients, who had been infected with the virus for 19 years on average, received five injections of the vaccine every 3 weeks and another six injections after a 6-month interval. Liver biopsies taken before and after the treatment showed that the vaccine prevented liver ...