Scientists Discover a New Treatment for Hepatitis B

Finding a cure for a chronic disease is the holy grail of medical research. The idea of discovering a medicine or treatment that could bring succor to millions of people is truly something to aspire to. 

Hepatitis B is one of those diseases that has eluded scientists for years. It is a slippery virus that is hard to diagnose and causes incredible damage. Now, research published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that a new treatment could functionally cure this dreaded illness. 

A Silent Liver Destroyer
Hepatitis B is an infectious liver disease that is spread via contact with blood, or other bodily fluids, reported CNN. It can also be contracted in childbirth.

For many people, Hepatitis B is not a huge concern because there is a very effective vaccine available, and for the majority of those infected, the disease simply causes a number of months of severe illness before it passes. 

For others, however — about 1.7 million people in the United States, and over 250 million people worldwide — Hepatitis B sticks around, becoming a chronic disease that is silently killing their liver. The disease hides in the body ready to pounce as soon as treatment is stopped. The disease can eventually cause liver damage or liver cancer, and an estimated 1.1 million people die of the disease per year. 

A Triple Threat
Because Hepatitis B is so hard to detect, according to National Geographic, finding a cure required a broad strategy. Any potential drug would need to block the virus from replicating, block specific viral proteins, and stimulate the immune system. A challenge, indeed. And yet, the new drug, called Bepirovirsen, appears to be able to achieve all three tasks, in some patients. 

Bepi, as it is called, works by binding Hepatitis B’s messenger RNA in order to stop RNA production as well as protein production. In addition, it stimulates the immune system, allowing it to do what it is built to do, and destroy the virus. 

In the drug trial of 1,838 adults with chronic Hepatitis B, 19 percent of the participants reached what is referred to as a functional cure of the disease, while in people who had lower levels of the viral surface antigen, the results were even more impressive. 25 percent of them were cured of the disease. 

This is truly a breakthrough. As Seng Gee Lim, a co-author of the study, and the director of Hepatology at the National University Health System in Singapore, told National Geographic, “We’ve not had a treatment come close to this level of cure. I think my patients will be extremely delighted to have this treatment available.” 

It has been a long road to the cure for Hepatitis B, and there is still a long way to go. One of the reasons for the prevalence of the virus is simple inequality. For many people in the world a cure is available in the form of preventative measures — a very effective vaccine. But for people living in countries with poor medical infrastructure neither the vaccine nor treatments may be available. The advent of Bepirovirsen is one more tool that can be used to fight this disparity among the peoples of the world.