Aa
L@@k!! Here's our Margaret in the Newspaper!!
¨*•☀¸.•*´★¸¸.•*¨*•*♦¸.•*´♥*´Way to Go Margaret!! You are really making a difference!!¨¸¸.•*¨*•☀¸.•*´★¸¸.•*¨*•*♦¸.•*´
I scanned the newspaper article (Metro section of the San Antonio Express News) just you could see it. It is not legible. I tried it a bunch of different ways and it came out looking like a ransom note. The article is on line and shows our fair Margaret working diligently at the computer. The on line article does not seem to have the charts and graphs.
______________________________________________________
Sufferers pin hopes on faster and safer drugs
By Theresa Clift
Updated 02:54 p.m., Friday, July 27, 2012
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Sufferers-pin-hopes-on-faster-and-safer-drugs-3739324.php
Margaret Dudley, 61, begins her morning like many others — with a cup of coffee and a scan of Internet news sites. Unlike most, though, she's looking for a headline she believes could save her life. Then she spends her day trying to make it happen, pushing research firms to speed their work on promising drugs.
It has been her routine since September, when she was shocked to receive a diagnosis of chronic hepatitis C, or HCV.
She might find the news she's looking for sooner than she expects. Half a dozen companies are doing trials for drugs that could work faster and without the side effects of current treatment.
The research is moving so fast that even scientists are having a difficult time keeping up with it, Robert Lanford of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute said.
But it's a race with a rising incidence of the disease, which now has reached 3.2 million Americans and 170 million people worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which in May recommended hepatitis C testing among baby boomers.
A liver disease, hepatitis can be survivable for years, but Dudley's case has been an aggressive threat. Since September, she has lost nearly 30 pounds.
A week after her diagnosis, she heard of a new drug being tested in San Antonio and placed her hopes on it, foregoing the drugs interferon and ribavarin, the standard treatment. They work in most cases but have major side effects.
But Dudley missed being part of the trial. By the time she obtained the required biopsy results, researchers no longer were taking her rare genotype, she said.
Dudley searched the nation for another trial that would accept her, but had no luck. In April, she signed an Internet petition to urge two drug companies to speed up trials of a promising drug. Her signature was only the 15th on it, but it gave her hope.
“From that day on, I have spent almost every waking hour getting this news out in any way that I can,” she said.
She took over managing the petition about a month ago. It now has 5,000 signatures. Every morning, she reads newly posted “reason for signing” messages. She works from her kitchen, making calls to politicians, celebrities with the disease and patients undergoing treatment nationwide, fighting to change the perception that all HCV sufferers are drug users. “Fatigue is one of the most common effects of hepatitis C, and if it wasn't for the Internet, I don't think people would have the energy to do what needs to be done, to see that the world soon knows about this current situation,” Dudley said.
A drug company, Pharmasset, was bought by Gilead Sciences for $11 billion in November after its small study achieved a 100 percent cure rate for a common genotype in 12 weeks with no serious side effects. It and other companies are working on new trials.
Lanford expects a breakthrough drug to be made available in about a year and a half.
“I'm an optimist in this field,” he said. “I believe most people will end up being cured in 12 to 24 weeks with one of these combinations already put together.”But he said he understands Dudley's frustration.
On Saturday, which is World Hepatitis Day, she will be at the Cove, a laundromat/restaurant at 601 W. Cypress owned by one of her daughters, for an informational event at 4-7 p.m. The Spurs Coyote will make an appearance, and an autographed Tony Parker jersey will be raffled.
“I may not be able to wait until (a new drug combination) is made available, but I'm not going
to stop,” Dudley said.
It can be difficult to determine definitively how an HCV patient got the disease, a Texas Department of State Health Services spokesman said.
Although Dudley was diagnosed last year, she believes she has had it much longer, tracking her symptoms back to an “act of vanity” about 12 years ago, when she got permanent eyebrow tattoos at a family-owned business on Broadway.
“I will never try to alter what God saw fit to give me again,” Dudley said.
She thinks the state had enough evidence to shut the business down, but that didn't happen.
In 2003, a Bexar County jury awarded another local woman $551,600 after finding she likely contracted hepatitis C from the same studio, Permanent Cosmetics by John Shumate, from lip coloring done mostly in 1999.
A state inspection in 2000 found serious violations there, including lack of sanitation, possession of dangerous pain-numbing drugs and a lack of sterilization records and client records. A routine inspection of the studio in September 2002 also yielded some violations.
The DSHS has no inspection records on the business from then until June 2009. By then, it had moved to Austin, was owned by Shumate's daughter under a new name, and had no violations. It has not been inspected since, according to records.
The department inspects licensed tattoo studios about every two years, more often when there are complaints, agency spokesman Chris Van Deusen said. He said the reports usually are kept for just three years, so some were probably discarded in this case.
The department has not revoked a tattoo studio license in San Antonio since before 2000, Van Deusen said. There are currently 89 licensed studios in the city.
Although the No. 1 way hepatitis C spreads is through needles, very few of those cases are from tattoo studios — it's more often by amateur work in prisons or homes, the CDC and DSHS agree.
Van Deusen said complaints about studios are usually about issues such as tattooing minors, unsanitary conditions or the failure to give instructions on how to care for a new tattoo.
“We certainly get (hepatitis C complaints) from time to time, but it's anecdotally a small proportion of the total complaints we get,” Van Deusen said.
_____________________________________
Here is page 1 of the actual newspaper article:
http://www.medhelp.org/user_photos/show/284523
Here's page 2
http://www.medhelp.org/user_photos/show/284522
I scanned the newspaper article (Metro section of the San Antonio Express News) just you could see it. It is not legible. I tried it a bunch of different ways and it came out looking like a ransom note. The article is on line and shows our fair Margaret working diligently at the computer. The on line article does not seem to have the charts and graphs.
______________________________________________________
Sufferers pin hopes on faster and safer drugs
By Theresa Clift
Updated 02:54 p.m., Friday, July 27, 2012
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Sufferers-pin-hopes-on-faster-and-safer-drugs-3739324.php
Margaret Dudley, 61, begins her morning like many others — with a cup of coffee and a scan of Internet news sites. Unlike most, though, she's looking for a headline she believes could save her life. Then she spends her day trying to make it happen, pushing research firms to speed their work on promising drugs.
It has been her routine since September, when she was shocked to receive a diagnosis of chronic hepatitis C, or HCV.
She might find the news she's looking for sooner than she expects. Half a dozen companies are doing trials for drugs that could work faster and without the side effects of current treatment.
The research is moving so fast that even scientists are having a difficult time keeping up with it, Robert Lanford of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute said.
But it's a race with a rising incidence of the disease, which now has reached 3.2 million Americans and 170 million people worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which in May recommended hepatitis C testing among baby boomers.
A liver disease, hepatitis can be survivable for years, but Dudley's case has been an aggressive threat. Since September, she has lost nearly 30 pounds.
A week after her diagnosis, she heard of a new drug being tested in San Antonio and placed her hopes on it, foregoing the drugs interferon and ribavarin, the standard treatment. They work in most cases but have major side effects.
But Dudley missed being part of the trial. By the time she obtained the required biopsy results, researchers no longer were taking her rare genotype, she said.
Dudley searched the nation for another trial that would accept her, but had no luck. In April, she signed an Internet petition to urge two drug companies to speed up trials of a promising drug. Her signature was only the 15th on it, but it gave her hope.
“From that day on, I have spent almost every waking hour getting this news out in any way that I can,” she said.
She took over managing the petition about a month ago. It now has 5,000 signatures. Every morning, she reads newly posted “reason for signing” messages. She works from her kitchen, making calls to politicians, celebrities with the disease and patients undergoing treatment nationwide, fighting to change the perception that all HCV sufferers are drug users. “Fatigue is one of the most common effects of hepatitis C, and if it wasn't for the Internet, I don't think people would have the energy to do what needs to be done, to see that the world soon knows about this current situation,” Dudley said.
A drug company, Pharmasset, was bought by Gilead Sciences for $11 billion in November after its small study achieved a 100 percent cure rate for a common genotype in 12 weeks with no serious side effects. It and other companies are working on new trials.
Lanford expects a breakthrough drug to be made available in about a year and a half.
“I'm an optimist in this field,” he said. “I believe most people will end up being cured in 12 to 24 weeks with one of these combinations already put together.”But he said he understands Dudley's frustration.
On Saturday, which is World Hepatitis Day, she will be at the Cove, a laundromat/restaurant at 601 W. Cypress owned by one of her daughters, for an informational event at 4-7 p.m. The Spurs Coyote will make an appearance, and an autographed Tony Parker jersey will be raffled.
“I may not be able to wait until (a new drug combination) is made available, but I'm not going
to stop,” Dudley said.
It can be difficult to determine definitively how an HCV patient got the disease, a Texas Department of State Health Services spokesman said.
Although Dudley was diagnosed last year, she believes she has had it much longer, tracking her symptoms back to an “act of vanity” about 12 years ago, when she got permanent eyebrow tattoos at a family-owned business on Broadway.
“I will never try to alter what God saw fit to give me again,” Dudley said.
She thinks the state had enough evidence to shut the business down, but that didn't happen.
In 2003, a Bexar County jury awarded another local woman $551,600 after finding she likely contracted hepatitis C from the same studio, Permanent Cosmetics by John Shumate, from lip coloring done mostly in 1999.
A state inspection in 2000 found serious violations there, including lack of sanitation, possession of dangerous pain-numbing drugs and a lack of sterilization records and client records. A routine inspection of the studio in September 2002 also yielded some violations.
The DSHS has no inspection records on the business from then until June 2009. By then, it had moved to Austin, was owned by Shumate's daughter under a new name, and had no violations. It has not been inspected since, according to records.
The department inspects licensed tattoo studios about every two years, more often when there are complaints, agency spokesman Chris Van Deusen said. He said the reports usually are kept for just three years, so some were probably discarded in this case.
The department has not revoked a tattoo studio license in San Antonio since before 2000, Van Deusen said. There are currently 89 licensed studios in the city.
Although the No. 1 way hepatitis C spreads is through needles, very few of those cases are from tattoo studios — it's more often by amateur work in prisons or homes, the CDC and DSHS agree.
Van Deusen said complaints about studios are usually about issues such as tattooing minors, unsanitary conditions or the failure to give instructions on how to care for a new tattoo.
“We certainly get (hepatitis C complaints) from time to time, but it's anecdotally a small proportion of the total complaints we get,” Van Deusen said.
_____________________________________
Here is page 1 of the actual newspaper article:
http://www.medhelp.org/user_photos/show/284523
Here's page 2
http://www.medhelp.org/user_photos/show/284522
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PrEP is used by people with high risk to prevent HIV infection.
