Hepatitis C by Ashleigh Leaver

Hepatitis C is a disease of the liver caused by the hepatitis C virus. It can range from both chronic and acute. Hepatitis C can fluctuate in severity from mild pain for two weeks or severe for a lifelong sentence. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services,

“3 million people in the United States are living with chronic hepatitis C, and most do not feel ill or know they are infected. There are approximately 17,000 new hepatitis C cases each year in the United States, many of which go unreported. Hepatitis C is a social epidemic because of how widespread it is, and the increasing numbers of people being affected.

            People have only known about Hepatitis C for about thirty years. In 1989 the CDC branded the “silent killer” with the name Hepatitis C. Though, just a few years later in 1991, the first ever treatment was discovered, but it was not as effective as they hoped it would be. In 1996, just eight years later they noticed a decline in the number of people affected(1). Going into just shy of twenty years of knowledge of Hepatitis C, infection rates were down but the rate of deaths surpassed the death rates of HIV. The number of people in the world affected by this disease was up to 150-170 million in the United States, President Obama declared July 28th as World Hepatitis Day in the year 2011(1). A year later, May 12, 2012, National Hepatitis Testing Day was celebrated. Those who were baby boomers had been suggested to get tested if they were born between the years 1945-1965 (CDC DVH - Know More Hepatitis - Timeline of Hepatitis C). “Public health officials are investigating after six people who visited the same clinic in the Carthay neighborhood of Los Angeles contracted acute cases of hepatitis C” (Cluster of Hepatitis C Cases Linked to Central L.A. Clinic; Health Officials Investigating) this is the most recent case happening February 25, 2019(1).

Socially, Hepatitis C effects millions on a worldwide scale. Approximately “71 million people around the world are living with chronic HCV”(Hepatitis C by the Numbers: Facts, Stats, and You), That is about fifty-five to seventy-five percent of the global population will develop liver cirrhosis (1). Within Texas, about;

387,395 Texans (1.79%) are infected with the hepatitis C virus. County prevalence varied from 1.25% to 2.63%, with higher rates concentrated along the US–Mexico border. However, most cases of infection were located near major Texas cities. (The prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection in Texas: implications for future health care)

A woman who goes by the name Connie published an online blog of her journey after being diagnosed with the silent killer. “I was diagnosed in 1994 with Chronic Active Hepatitis C.  In 1992 I had surgery at an outpatient surgical center where a drug user, who had hepatitis C, was working as a scrub tech” (Connie’s Hep C Story). When the tech was alone with the patient, he had got access to the medicine left out by the anesthesiologist for the patient. “He took the patients syringe of medicine and shot up.  He then refilled the same syringe with normal saline from the patient’s IV bag and placed it back on the anesthesiologist tray” (1). The foreign contaminated syringe was used that day for surgery.  After the surgery, Connie had symptoms closely associated with liver disease, “Later the source of the infection was discovered after the scrub tech was caught, arrested, and confessed” (1). Connie has suffered from this disease for over twenty years trying various different treatments all because a drug abuser employee wanted to experience a high that day. In 2012, Connie was freed from the condition and was completely cured by the use of triple therapy, treatment with Incivek with a combination with Peg-Interferon and Ribavirin (1).

Pamela Anderson, a loved movie star off Baywatch, was suffering from the disease Hepatitis C. Though, in 2016 they diagnosed her to be free of this disease.  Anderson announced that in 2002, she had incurred the disease from then-husband Tommy Lee after sharing needles after tattoos (Mandle). Pamela told reporters;

Sixteen years ago that was [considered] a death sentence. I think it really worked on my self-esteem. Even though I may have looked confident on the outside, I think it really was a dark cloud that lingered over me. I don’t have any liver damage and I don’t have any side effects. I’m living my life the way I want to but it could have eventually have caused me some problems and so it was a real blessing that I was able to get the medicine. (1)

Pamela Anderson suffered for sixteen years with Hepatitis C all because her husband at the time withheld pertinent information about his own disease. 

            Treatment for Hepatitis C is extraordinarily expensive. Though, effective, Direct-acting antivirals or DAA are now prescribed to treat Hepatitis C. According to the article Medical News Today, These are the “newest available agents to treat HCV. These medications work by targeting specific steps in the HCV life cycle to disrupt the reproduction of viral cells”. During March 2014, they started a diagnostic experiment of the effectiveness of treatment using DAA’s. From March 2014 till the winter of 2017;

over two hundred and ninety-one patients were enrolled from the Vancouver Infectious Disease Centre and received interferon-free DAA HCV therapy. The mean age was 54 years, 88% were patients who inject drugs, and 20% were HCV treatment experienced. At data lock, 62 individuals were still on treatment and 229 were eligible for evaluation of SVR by intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis. Overall, 207 individuals achieved SVR (90%), with 13 losses to follow-up, 7 relapses, and 2 premature treatment discontinuations. ITT SVR analysis shows that active PWID and treatment-naïve patients were less likely to achieve SVR (P =.0185 and.0317, respectively). Modified ITT analysis of active PWID showed no difference in achieving SVR (P =.1157) compared with non-PWID. (Alimohammadi)

Using this method of treatment has proven to be highly effective for curing Hepatitis C. Patients with the sustained virologic response had a ninety-five percent rate. DAA’s are “highly efficacious, well-tolerated, and relatively short are now available for all HCV genotypes and for patient populations historically considered difficult to cure” (1). 

There are six genotypes of Hepatitis C, many of the curable treatments founded rely on which of the six genotypes you have. Harvoni is a medicine used to treat adults with chronic hepatitis C, with the genotypes one, four, five or six. Infections with or without cirrhosis can be treated with this prescription drug (I AM HEP CURED). In a study using approximately   850 patients with genotype one Hepatitis C, and no previous treatment for Hepatitis C, with or without cirrhosis, “99% (210 out of 213) of those who received HARVONI once daily for 12 weeks were cured” (1). A second study was performed using approximately 650 patients with the genotype one Hepatitis C, with no previous treatment of  Hep C, and “without cirrhosis, 96% (208 out of 216) of those who received HARVONI once daily for 12 weeks were cured” (1). 

There are many treatments to cure Hepatitis C that are very effective. These treatments have proven to cure up to ninety-five percent of the cases (Learn More About Hepatitis C).

Though, there are treatments that have proven to be unsuccessful. Many treatments rely on the genotype of Hepatitis C one person has. Genotypes such as two and three have been proven to show a more resilient effect. These genotypes are harder to find an exact cure for, therefore, there is no 100 percent cure for hepatitis C based on all the genotypes of the disease.

            Camus had an interesting take on the meaning of what life is, He disputed that it is unreasonable for humans in society to uncover a gratifying answer of the meaning of life, and any attempt to foist a meaning on the universe will end in disaster (Hendricks). Camus;

emphasizes and tries to make clear, the Absurd expresses a fundamental disharmony, a tragic incompatibility, in our existence. In effect, he argues that the Absurd is the product of a collision or confrontation between our human desire for order, meaning, and purpose in life and the blank, indifferent “silence of the universe”: “The absurd is not in man nor in the world,” Camus explains, “but in their presence together…it is the only bond uniting them. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Hepatitis C is random, there is no rhyme or rhythm when it comes to acquiring the disease. Most of the time people do not even know they have come to have the disease. There are different strains of genotypes within the disease itself. There is no cure for all types of the “Silent killer” but for a few of the genotypes, which in itself is absurd. The absurdity of the whole disease is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people will continue their daily life activities with zero knowledge that they are currently dying from this disease. Camus believed we as a society were doomed in a meaningless birth-death cycle (class notes).

            Finally, Hepatitis C is a very common disease that millions of people have and do not even know. The absurdity of the disease is the fact that it comes with minimal symptoms leaving one with not knowing they are dying potentially. There is no real cure to Hepatitis C especially if it were to be caught in the later stages. There are several types of genotypes which tie into which cure could help slow the progression of Hepatitis C. Lastly, Camus believed the world ends in a detrimental doom.