FREE! Download Windows Media Player
ST. LOUIS (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- It's been called the silent epidemic. Four million Americans now live with it. And there's no cure. As many as 200 million people around the world have hepatitis C, and researchers expect that number to triple in the next decade. The virus can cause liver cancer and even death. But there may soon be a way to prevent it.
Kathie Bryson is one of the victims. She has hepatitis C. She got it through a needle she touched while working as a nurse. "The first thing out of my mouth was, I didn't do anything wrong," she says. "I was terrified because I knew that hepatitis C was pretty much a killer."
Bryson also developed liver cancer. After surgery and four months of chemo, she's just happy to be alive. "I kind of laugh that every day if I wake up, and I'm not feeling good, I know I'm still here," she says. "I say if I wake up one day and I feel great, then I'll know I've died."
Hepatitis C is a contagious virus that travels through the bloodstream and infects the liver. Researchers at St. Louis University are now testing the first vaccine in humans to prevent hepatitis C.
"This is an infection that causes a very bad disease. If we can find something to prevent people from becoming infected, that would be a great thing," Sharon Frey, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, tells Ivanhoe.
In her study, 60 patients received four different doses of the hepatitis C vaccine. All the patients produced antibodies that researchers believe could protect them from the virus.
Dr. Frey says, "If a vaccine can develop those responses, hopefully then it will protect a person from becoming infected or developing disease."
Bryson hopes it will. "It would be incredible," she says. "It would be a blessing. I just hope that I live long enough to see it." So far, she's beaten the odds and hopes others will get a chance to do the same.
The only side effects of the vaccine were pain and tenderness. Hepatitis C is transmitted through blood and sexual intercourse. You can get it through needles or blood transfusions.
Linear Mode
