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GRANT WILL ALLOW UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA RESEARCHERS TO INVESTIGATE NEW TREATMENTS FOR HEPATITIS C

Researchers at the University of Virginia's Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Research are trying to find ways to help people like Diane Mawyer. In 1994, the forty-six year old Afton woman was on medical leave from her nursing job at the American Red Cross when she was told she had severe liver damage and would need a transplant. Dr. Tim Pruett, professor of surgery at U.Va., determined the cause of Diane's liver failure to be hepatitis C, a diagnosis he had made many times in liver transplant patients.

Hepatitis C infection, a chronic form of hepatitis, is spread by blood and caused by a virus in the same family as yellow fever. Roughly four million Americans are infected, making hepatitis C the most common blood-borne infection in the U.S. Most people are not aware they are infected until they are diagnosed with liver failure or liver cancer. In fact, hepatitis C is thought to be the most important factor behind the recent rise in liver cancer in the U.S. Although some treatments for hepatitis C exist, these treatments suppress the virus in only a small number of patients.

Infection with hepatitis C continues to spread because many people do not know they are infected until the liver is destroyed and transplant is required. Unfortunately, transplant operations for these patients are not curative. Many do well for several years; however, more research is needed to develop treatments to prolong the disease-free period, Pruett said.

A team of researchers at the Carter Immunology Center recently received a $660,000 grant to study hepatitis C. The funding, awarded by the Chicago-based Dr. Ralph and Marion Falk Medical Research Trust, will be used to develop treatments and vaccines and help establish an International Hepatitis C Research Center at U.Va.

Our research seeks to generate treatments to allow transplant patients to live longer and to develop ways to harness the immune system to produce better vaccines, said Dr. Thomas J. Braciale, professor of pathology and microbiology and director of the Carter Immunology Center at U.Va. This grant will allow us to move forward with this research and begin to realize our goal of establishing an International Hepatitis C Research Center.

With few treatment options available, three years later, suffering from overwhelming exhaustion, dementia and other hepatitis C-related health problems, Diane's doctors told her she needed another transplant. In June 1999, she received a liver and kidney transplant. Four months later Diane is feeling great; however, she and her doctors are monitoring her progress closely knowing that hepatitis C may be back.

October 4, 1999