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Sickle cell patient successfully treated for hepatitis
Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999 Associated Press
DURHAM, N.C. (February 15, 1999 12:39 a.m. EST nandotimes.com) - A patient released from Duke University Medical Center represents hope for people who may have caught a dangerous liver virus from blood transfusions intended to treat sickle cell anemia.
Huda Al-Saadi, 35, was returning to her home in United Arab Emirates Sunday. Doctors say she was successfully treated for hepatitis C despite her sickle cell anemia.
Sickle cells are misshapen forms of the red blood cells that deliver oxygen throughout the body. Spiky, sickle-shaped blood cells collect in tiny blood vessels like a beaver dam in a river, eventually blocking blood flow and sometimes breaking.
Cells counting on oxygen are starved, causing terrific pain. Patients also may suffer strokes, bone damage, skin ulcers, infections, lung blockages, anemia, delayed growth, jaundice and other complications.
An estimated 8 to 13 percent of Americans whose ancestors came from Africa or the Middle East carry at least one sickle cell gene. A defective gene from each parent is needed to create a person with the disease.
Until the past decade, when improved screening cleaned up blood supplies, blood transfusions to treat sickle cell sometimes were infected with the virus that causes hepatitis C.
Sickle cell patients are not routinely tested for hepatitis C, despite the belief that at least 30 percent of sickle cell patients have the viral infection, said Dr. Mark Swaim, who treated Al-Saadi.
Conventional treatments are likely to throw fragile sickle cell patients into attacks of wracking pain and other symptoms that could end in organ shutdown, he said.
A technique used by Duke's Swaim administered interferon-alpha and Ribavirin, an antiviral drug previously used mostly in pediatric pulmonary diseases, with a drug called hydroxyurea, used alone for many years to manage sickle cell anemia.
Hydroxyurea increases the body's natural production of fetal hemoglobin - remnants of the type present in babies at birth. Tiny amounts of the fetal variety, which doesn't sickle, continue to circulate throughout the adult body.
Al-Saadi was treated with the method since July. Her medical team believes she is one of the rare few with sickle cell disease to be cured of hepatitis C.
"It is written in the Koran that every illness has its cure," Al-Saadi said in her native Arabic Saturday as she prepared to leave. "After a long journey of suffering, I believe Allah has blessed me."
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