FOUND: Cure for the hepatitis C virus that hit Body Shop’s Anita
ANEW daily tablet hailed by experts as ‘a cure’ for hepatitis C could eradicate the killer virus in just three months, if all patients can access the treatment. The drug breakthrough means every type of the disease in existence in Britain can now be treated. However a decision on whether an already cash-strapped NHS will agree to fund it is yet to be made.
Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that destroys the liver and can cause cancer, leaving sufferers needing a transplant. The new pill works by blocking two stages of the virus’s life cycle, stopping it from making copies of itself. This gives the body time to clear it completely. Studies show a 98 per cent cure rate in 12 weeks.
There are six types of hepatitis C, with the majority of sufferers in the UK infected by genotypes one and three (46 per cent and 43 per cent respectively).
Genotype three is the hardest to treat and people with this type tend to become ill more rapidly.
The new tablet, Epclusa, which was licensed for use in the UK last month, is a combination of two antiviral drugs, Sofosbuvir, which was licenced last year, and a newer medication Velpatasvir.
Unlike the older treatments – Interferon and Ribavirin – Epclusa does not cause debilitating side effects. It works for all types of hepatitis C, including type three, which is unresponsive to other drugs.
At least 5,000 NHS patients in the UK were unknowingly infected in the 1970s and 1980s through ‘tainted’ blood transfusions, including Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick, who died in 2007, aged 64, of an unrelated brain haemorrhage.
She believed she contracted the disease via a blood transfusion during the birth of daughter Sam in 1971.
Professor William Rosenberg, at The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and UCLH, says Epclusa could potentially help up to 100,000 patients in the UK – but only if doctors are able to prescribe it.
The ‘list price’ for Epclusa is £38,979.99 for a 12-week course, according to manufacturer Gilead Sciences. However they say: ‘As per other hepatitis C medicines, the actual price paid by the NHS is lower due to discounts negotiated.’
The innovation comes at an uncertain time for funding of new treatments for hepatitis C.
Prescribing watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellece (NICE) has given the green light for doctors to offer anti-virals. But in March, NHS England imposed a cap on the number of patients with the disease that hospital trusts are allowed to treat – 10,000 a year across Britain as a whole – and introduced financial penalties for those which exceed the cap.
Only patients with advanced cases of the liver disease are being offered curative treatment, with others told to ‘watch and wait’. UK charity the Hepatitis C Trust is seeking a judicial review on the decision, with confirmation expected in the autumn. In the meantime, the UK is ‘badly failing’ to implement World Health Organisation targets to wipe out the disease by 2030, according to campaigners.
DR STEVE Ryder, a liver specialist at Nottingham University Hospital, said: ‘The new drugs might be very effective, but they are also costly. We have NICE approval, but the NHS is still rationing them, based on the severity of liver disease.’
Hepatitis C causes 500 deaths a year in the UK but doctors are concerned the UK will be unable to meet the WHO directive. ‘At current rates, the UK is badly failing to hit the target,’ said Dr Ryder. ‘We have drugs that can cure almost everybody, but we’re way off achieving it.
‘In other countries, the more patients treated the bigger reduction in cost they get from the drug companies,’ said Dr Ryder. ‘We have to hope that the NHS will step up and get better at negotiating these deals, too. We have the means to cure this disease, so failure would be a huge missed opportunity.’
Last year Baywatch star Pamela Anderson said she had been cured by similar anti-viral drugs after living with the disease for 16 years.
Prof Rosenberg said of the new drug: ‘It could eradicate infection in almost all cases, improving life expectancy, preventing liver cancer, liver failure, death and liver transplantation. But by capping the number of patients doctors can treat, patients with the worst liver damage are being prioritised. As a result, doctors cannot prescribe the drugs for everyone who would benefit.’