Expensive Hepatitis C Drugs Have Deadly Side Effect

Hepatitis C drugs can be responsible for hepatitis B.

Expensive does not always mean good. According to FDA, people who take hepatitis C drugs are at a high risk of developing hepatitis B. The Food and Drug Administration asked doctors who prescribe drugs for hepatitis C to screen their patients also for the B type. The drugs, called direct-acting antivirals, could be more dangerous than we think.

Health officials identified 24 cases of hepatitis B reactivation after the patients were treated with direct-acting antivirals from November 22, 2013, to July 18, 2016. This number includes only the cases that were shown to FDA. There could be more patients who got sick because of this disease. From those 24 people, two of them died and one needed a liver transplant.

FDA wants to add a warning on the labels of hepatitis C drugs. This way, people will be aware of the danger. It is hard to know that the drug you take for one disease can reactive another one, but patients have to know the side-effects of their medication.

There are more than 3.2 million Americans who suffer from Hepatitis C. There were times when almost 15 000 people died every year because of it, but the drugs changed that. However, the treatment is expensive for most people. For example, the prices start at 84 000 dollars and can go up to 94 000 dollars.

Almost 1 million Americans suffer from hepatitis B and 3 000 die every year because of it. The main factors are unprotected sex, intravenous drug use and any contact that involves blood from an infected person. The biggest problem is that there is no cure for Hepatitis B. There are drugs which can make patients feel better and have control over the disease. Moreover, there are a lot of people who do not know they are infected and they get tested when it is too late.

What we know for sure is that doctors should screen patients for hepatitis B while they are getting treatment for the C type. Researchers are still trying to understand how these two diseases are connected and what makes hepatitis B reactivate.

Health officials do not want to discourage people who need to use hepatitis C drugs. Those treatments can save people’s lives. They just want patients to be informed about the danger and have doctors pay more attention to hepatitis B.

Image source: Wikipedia

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.