Interesting Article and more food for thought!!!

[DoubleDose]

Here is the link, and also the copied and pasted article at the bottom of the discussion.

http://www.hivandhepatitis.com/hep_c/news/2008/030708_a.html

Methamphetamine Promotes Hepatitis C Virus Replication in Human Liver Cells  (see bottom of post)

Here is my commentary about this article and other related studies:  
This article and study may be looked at as merely supporting the fact that drugs like methamphetimine, heroin, alcohol and cocaine promote the wild, rampant, reproduction of HCV and all worsen the infection,... BUT I have a very different interpretation of this information.  I often have wondered why a disproportionate number of alcoholics come down with HCV.(As I have argued in past threads) Especially those who have no prior risk factors, and were not IVDU's . Same can be said for drug injectors, of course, and we can see the easy blood to blood connection there...but still something like 50% of injection drug users are said to be HCV positive! (Does everyone use a needle from an HCV positive person???)  What also about the high number of 'snorting drug users' and alcoholics, etc who are HCV positive????  The immune system is said to be rendered dysfunctional against HCV by these drugs, and the infection surges dramatically.

  My opinion is that there may be an inactive, or latent HCV virius already there, in an inactive, unexpressed state, in 'some or many' people in the population, maybe in the liver, or CNS, or wherever it might hide.  When people use powerful drugs that incapacitate the immune system, the virus then surges into being, and becomes a detectable, active infection.  Other viruses also have similar behaviors, and remain in our bodies or CNS for life.

THIS would explain the high rate of HCV in alcoholics, cocain users, etc.  How about the injection drug crowd?  Are their infections all actually being TRANSMITTED from person to person?  Does every drug user end up sharing needles with HCV infected people, much less sharing needles at all?  Or, might they become spontaneously infected, because the virus is allowed to 'activate' in their blood and liver, from the "inactivation of their immune defenses" against HCV???

To me this makes more sense, than thinking that the alcoholics must all be 'closet' injection drug users.  Or that one out of every two drug injectors uses an infected needle from an HCV positive person.  Can that really be a sensible statistic?  Or does the powerful drug injection itself just render our defenses totally 'dysfunctional' against a latent, inactive, unseen virus?  How about people 'snorting' drugs.  Is it really blood to blood transmission, or just activation of an internal, latent virus, by the powerful drug slamming our immune defenses?    This has been one of my hypotheses over recent years, and I would love to see more study of this, especially in the alcoholic populations with HCV.  Is there another mechanism causing HCV infection in this group, or are they all lying about past drug injection use?
  
Here is the link again, and the pasted article:

http://www.hivandhepatitis.com/hep_c/news/2008/030708_a.html

Methamphetamine Promotes Hepatitis C Virus Replication in Human Liver Cells

By Liz Highleyman

While there have been numerous studies of hepatitis C in individuals who inject drugs (primarily heroin), less is known about the effects of non-injection drugs on hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Methamphetamine is a stimulant that may be taken as a pill, injected, snorted, smoked, or administered anally.

In the April 2008 Journal of Viral Hepatitis, L. Ye of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues reported on a laboratory study looking at whether methamphetamine inhibits innate immunity in host cells, thereby facilitating HCV replication in human hepatocytes (liver cells).

Results

• Methamphetamine inhibited natural intracellular interferon alpha expression in human hepatocytes, which was associated with increased HCV replication.

• Methamphetamine also compromised the anti-HCV effect of recombinant interferon alpha, as used for hepatitis C treatment.

• Introduction of methamphetamine inhibited expression of the signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT-1), a key modulator of interferon-mediated biological responses.

• Methamphetamine also down-regulated expression of interferon regulatory factor 5 (IRF-5), a transcriptional factor that activates the interferon pathway.


Conclusion

In conclusion, the authors wrote, "These in vitro findings that methamphetamine compromises interferon alpha-mediated innate immunity against HCV infection indicate that methamphetamine may have a cofactor role in the immunopathogenesis of HCV disease."

3/07/08

Reference
L Ye, JS Peng, Z Wang, and others. Methamphetamine enhances Hepatitis C virus replication in human hepatocytes. Journal of Viral Hepatitis 1594): 261-270. April 2008.

[working dog]

half way through this i was going to say what jim said about an alcoholics lifestyle..as a group they probably take more risks..just think of where they tend to hang out in bars where theres all kinds of stuff from fights to heavy drug users..i wonder if alcohol changes the viscosity of blood by thinning the serum that the blood cells and hcv virus travel in.......billy

[eureka254]

Could that be linked at all?
------------
There appears to be evidence that Hepatitis transmission does occur from mother-to-child (called vertical transmission, I believe), but I don't think their is any evidence that points to father-to-child transmission (yet, anyway).  I would theorize it is probably unlikely, especially if the profile of HCV being blood-to-blood transmission only is correct.

[fretboard]

Methamphetamine Promotes Hepatitis C Virus Replication in Human Liver Cells, that is the case with morphine derivative drugs as well.  Vicodin, Codeine, Norco all of those pain pills Oxycontin.  All I wanted to say was I know one person who went through treatment sucessfully and he only injected drugs once.  Yes once, I know him really well and he don't lie.  The friend of my wife's who is currently in a HepC study doesn't know how she got it because she never ever injected drugs.  My point is if you ever snorted coke and shared a dollar bill then that could definitely be the culprit as she did do that.  I had a blood transfusion in 1982, you just never know.  Good thread cause it's very informative.  God Bless    

[Rosebud41]

I am glad you posted this info.
Ideas like yours have occurred to me or the past few weeks.

I'll download the article and read it.

Thanks

[NancyPF]

My mother disclosed to me that my father had a type of hepatitis around the time I was born.  She wasn't sure if it was A, B, or C, but that he was very sick for several weeks.

Could that be linked at all?

Nancy

[jmjm530]

Let me throw in one one late-breaking thought :) Just like *perhaps* meth users have a lowered immune system and therefore might tend to clear the virus more naturally -- or even pick up the virus more easily -- than a non meth user. Perhaps the same with alcholics. That an alcoholic -- either because of lowere immune response or other factors we don't know -- are more suspectible to both catching the virus and/or less able to clear it naturally. For example, two people could be exposed to the virus, but only one might come down with HCV. Perhaps only one might even develop antibodies. No studies on this as far as I know. But in any event, I put this out as one more explanation why alcoholics might have a higher incidence of HCV -- as opposed to the idea that occult HCV is somehow rampant in the population and that drinking alcohol somehow "reactivates" the occult virus into what we would term an active virus, i.e. RNA positive in the blood. I think that's what you're theorizing and what I don't see supported. Hopefully, I have you theory correct.

[jmjm530]

If your "reactivation" theory is correct, then of course this data, as well as the alcohol studies, might support it. I just wanted to clarify, at least for others, that this study does not suggest this at all, nor do the alcohol studies in my opinion.

As alcoholics are known to underestimate the amount of drinks per day, people are also known to underestimate risk factors in studies that use questionaires for research input. There is some association between alcholism and IV drug use as well as perhaps other higher-risk factors not fully vetted in the study perhaps even such things economically-influenced factors such as less-safe tatoo parlours or less than ideal sterilization procedures in clinics, etc.  I think that's all it is. That alcholics as a group, because of lifestyle  have a higher incidence of HCV than non-alcoholic populations. They probably also as a group have a higher incidence of any number of conditions although frankly I've never studied it.

-- Jim

[eureka254]

With so many HCV patients unaware of how they got infection, I often wondered if it isn't a possibility (especially considering our lack of awareness and understanding of HCV until recent years) that mother-to-child transmission has been occuring unbeknownst to us for years? (Just thinking in hypotheticals, of course...)  And if indeed we can inherit viral infections, it certainly could be possible that individual response/clearance/viral activity is influenced greatly by 'environmental' factors... that is to say, maybe some HCV infections existed at birth and remain undetected/asymptomatic until 'activated' by undesirable liver activity prompted by alcohol or other 'drugs' (meth? alcohol? heroin? tylenol? statins?... so many 'anti-liver' medications/drugs out there...)  Being that there is still so much today we do NOT understood about HCV and its replication, I think any 'questioning', if it may lead us to more answers, is a worthwhile discussion...

[DoubleDose]

On the face of it, you are probably correct, that the authors are not exactly making the case that I am making.  I think they are saying that the meth use could be a factor in whether or not an infection is a chonic  or serious one...without putting much further thought into what that may imply.  Now if the infection were already there, they would probably not attributing the 'immunopathogenesis' role to to methamphetamine, but rather a role in worsening or intensifying the virus.

Hey, I agree with you that probably no one is think along the lines of activating or awakening an already present virus....which is why I am raising the question, or the possibility.  Something looks wrong to me in the numbers for alcohol abusers, cocaine, meth users etc. to automatically assume that all is from direct blood to blood infection.  Maybe I am entirely off base, and that's fine, and maybe I am giving more credit to the self-reporting of risk factors in various populations, but then again, I think, in light of 'persistent viral' research, occult virus findings, and other newly emerging understandings about the virus...it is not far fetched to think that some people might indeed 'carry' some either latent, occult, or unexpressed form of the virus, without any sign or symptom of active infection.

If this is indeed a possibility, (and this has not really been studied yet), then I think some 'unknown' cases of HCV infection might stem from these instances of 'extreme immune system de-activation' against HCV.  And, of course, this is only a conjecture, theory or what have you...and I ask it as a question more than a statement, but I really do not think that it is outlandish.  Look at the number of hidden viruses that come into play in many HIV positive persons, as their immune system slowly crumbles.  Would we have been aware of ANY of those hidden, latent pathogens had the person not become infected with HIV, and had their immune systems destroyed?  My question is this:  Why NOT HCV?  Why could it NOT be a latent virus, in some people?  

I want to make sure that nobody out there mis-interprets what I am saying, because I do not have any real proof of the above conjecture, nor am I saying that this MUST be what is happening.  But I am asking the question.  Which, in science, must be done first, before you can really come to any valid conclusions.  I just don't think we know quite enough yet to eliminate this possibility.

And, again, let's find out why triple the percentage of alcoholics are HCV positive than the general population???  And that is adjusted for risk factors, like transfusion, and IVDU.  If  anyone has a hard and proven answer to that statistic, I am all ears.

DoubleDose

[jmjm530]

My take is simply that meth may (not unsurprisingly)  lower the immune response and therefore interfere with the body's natural fight against HCV, as in the case of those that clear the virus naturaly, i.e without treatment. Spontaneous clearance occurs in around 40 per cent in women and 20 per cent in men.

So, given a hypothetical meth user and a hypothetical non-meth user. If both contracted HCV from an outside source -- the non-meth user would have a better chance of clearing the virus naturally.

I understand that you are merely making an hypothesis in line with  your "reactivation" theory (alcohol before) --  but for those new to these discussions, I see no mention or inference in the article that suggest that Meth could reactivate a latent virus, or that alcohol (from past posts) could reactivate a latent virus.

To your specific mention that the authors may be saing that "the ORIGIN of the infection could be due to meth use" -- again, I don't see it at all in the article you published. Their words are "that methamphetamine may have a cofactor role in the immunopathogenesis of HCV disease." to means that meth may suppress the immune system making people more suspectible to the virus perhaps by facillitating replication. This is quite different from saying that meth is bringing a latent virus into an active state.

Now, of course you may be right -- I really don't think so -- but my point is that's not what the authors appear to be saying or implying. Why not simply email the authors and ask them if that's what they really mean?

-- Jim

-- Jim

[NancyPF]

If I'm understand this correctly, are you saying that you would have to have used meth to have Hep C?  I have never used meth, but thirty plus years ago did experiment very briefly with IV drug use (cocaine).

Nancy

[DoubleDose]

Also note the wording of the conclusion by the authors:

"In conclusion, the authors wrote, "These in vitro findings that methamphetamine compromises interferon alpha-mediated innate immunity against HCV infection indicate that methamphetamine may have a cofactor role in the immunopathogenesis of HCV disease."  "

My comment:   My take is that they are ATTRIBUTING HCV infection in meth users directly to the METH use itself and the effectv of the drug on the immune capability.  Not saying that there was a blood-to-blood transmission at all.  They don't seem to be only saying that meth use merely makes the infection worse.  I think they are saying that the ORIGIN of the infection could be due to meth use.  Which would support the idea of a latent virus coming into an active state.