The most effective medicines to treat the chronic liver disease, known as hepatitis C, have been identified by researchers, but there are currently no medicines available that can cure the disease entirely.
“There are a lot of drugs that are very good at treating the disease but don’t treat all the symptoms,” said Dr. Peter Cawthorne, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
He said research is focused on new drugs that have fewer side effects, are less expensive and work in more patients.
Currently, there are four available hepatitis C treatments: methotrexate, methotriate, cefixime and cefazolin.
Methotrexates are currently the most popular treatment for the disease.
Cefazoline is a combination of two drugs: metheprocaine and cimetidine.
The combination is the best treatment for people with cirrhosis, where the liver is damaged by the virus and cannot function normally.
People with cirrux or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are unable to metabolize the drug, so their liver is able to produce only the active form of the drug.
Other therapies are currently in development.
Dr. Cawdrey said research in the U.S. and Canada is focused mainly on developing drugs that can be administered intravenously or orally.
One such drug, moclobemide, is approved in the United States but has yet to be approved in other countries.
If approved in Canada, it could be marketed by 2020.
“The idea of a drug that has a very low side effect profile is exciting,” said Cawdorne.
But he cautioned against over prescribing these drugs, noting that the only way to be sure they work is to see if they work well and have no side effects.
“People who take these drugs will have a very different reaction to them than if they take an anti-inflammatory drug,” said Professor Cawndrea.
Researchers have also discovered a way to deliver drugs directly to the liver.
They inject the drugs into the bloodstream to stop the drugs from working and block their actions.
There are currently several drug treatments for hepatitis C that do not involve injecting the drugs directly into the body.
Several treatments include the use of oral agents, injections and drugs that slow the flow of blood and blood vessels, known colloquially as colectomy.
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1 in 1,000 Americans are at risk for hepatitis.
A recent study conducted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that a group of people with the chronic hepatitis C virus, known also as CLLV, who received a treatment in a hospital received significantly lower levels of the virus in their blood when compared to people who did not receive the treatment.
The team also found that when they compared the levels of antibodies in their patients who received the treatment with those who did, the patients with CLLVs had significantly lower antibody levels.
“We think this is a big step forward in terms of finding new treatments for chronic hepatitis,” said study author Dr. Mark R. Strain.
In addition to finding drugs that don’t work, researchers are working on new ways to help people with liver disease.
“There is a lot that we are still trying to figure out how to do in the long term,” said Strain, who has been studying hepatitis C for more than a decade.
This is a developing story.
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