A large, multi-centre study refutes earlier suggestions that antiviral drugs for treating hepatitis C may lead to a higher recurrence of liver cancer.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center studied the records of patients who had been successfully treated for liver cancer at 31 medical centres in North America, comparing those who were and were not given direct-acting antivirals for hepatitis C. The study found no significant difference in the recurrence of liver cancer between the two groups.
Similarly, the study found no difference in the aggressiveness of the cancer in those patients who did experience a recurrence.
“Our study was inspired by a single-centre study from Spanish investigators in 2016. That study gained a lot of press and sparked fear about treating liver cancer patients for their hepatitis C,” said Dr. Amit Singal, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Medical Director of the Liver Tumor Program. “Based on these new data, providers can feel reassured that it is safe to treat hepatitis C in these patients and allow them to receive the known benefits of hepatitis C therapy.”
Some 3.2 million individuals in the U.S., the large majority of them baby boomers, have chronic hepatitis C infection. Many of these individuals struggle with inflammation of the liver and impaired liver function, as well as cirrhosis, or scarring of liver tissue. Since 2013, effective antiviral drugs have been available to treat hepatitis C infection.
Chronic hepatitis C infection is also one of the leading causes of liver cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of all individuals with liver cancer have underlying chronic hepatitis C infection.
The rate of new cases of liver cancer has been rising steadily in recent decades, and the state of Texas has one of the highest rates of occurrence in the country.
When liver cancer is diagnosed early, it can be effectively treated with surgery, ablation, or radiation therapy. Sometimes liver cancer patients have their tumour successfully removed, but the underlying chronic hepatitis C infection remains and continues to impair liver function further.
In this study, 42 percent of liver cancer survivors who were treated with direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) experienced a recurrence of their cancer, compared with 59 percent of patients who were not treated with antivirals.
“Our results suggest that use of DAA therapies is safe and potentially beneficial in hepatitis C-infected patients with a history of liver cancer,” said Dr. Singal, who holds the David Bruton, Jr. Professorship in Clinical Cancer Research and is Clinical Chief of Hepatology.

UT Southwestern Medical Centerwww.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2019/hepatitis-c.html

The International Hospital Federation (IHF) announced in July the 27 finalists in the four categories of the 2018 IHF Awards which honors innovations and outstanding achievements in the healthcare industry.
The IHF awards program received a record number of 160 entries from 118 organizations in 33 countries for the IHF / Dr Kwang Tae Kim Grand Award and Excellence Awards in Leadership and Management in Healthcare, Quality & Safety and Patient-centered Care, and Corporate Social Responsibility. After an extensive review by the panel of judges composed of health leaders from around the globe, 27 top entries from the four categories have been selected as finalists from which the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Merit Awards will be chosen.
“With the number of entries vying for the IHF Awards this year, the judges had a very difficult time evaluating. I am happy and delighted to see that all 160 submitted entries are of high standards aiming at improving many different aspects of health care and service delivery,” said Dr Lawrence Lai, Chair of the IHF Awards Committee. “For the finalists this year, I am proud to say that their projects or programs are indeed most outstanding and impressive.”
IHF has been recognizing innovation, excellence, outstanding achievements and best practices of hospitals and healthcare organizations since 2015 when the Awards was first presented in Chicago, USA.
This year’s winners will be awarded in front of industry peers on 10 October 2018 during the 42nd World Hospital Congress at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in Australia.
Gold Winners will be invited to speak at a special session during the World Hospital Congress to share their winning programs and projects while Silver, Bronze Winners and Merit Awardees will be displaying posters at the Congress exhibition. 

For more information on the IHF Awards Finalists, go to: https://congress.ihf-fih.org/finalists

To attend the IHF Awards Ceremony and World Hospital Congress, go to: www.hospitalcongress2018.com

A new study suggests chemotherapy may cause acute amenorrhea leading to early menopause in women with lung cancer. The study is the first to comment on amenorrhea rates in women younger than 50, concluding that women with lung cancer who desire future fertility should be educated about risks and options before starting treatment.
According to the Mayo Clinic, although the rate of lung cancer diagnoses in men has decreased by 32% since 1975, it has risen 94% percent in women and now has surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death in US women. Although lung cancer is more common in older adults, women are diagnosed at a younger age compared with men, and approximately 5,000 premenopausal US women are diagnosed with lung cancer annually. Extensive research of women receiving treatment for breast cancer has found that between 40% and 80% have premature menopause. However, early menopause rates after lung cancer treatments are understudied.
Unique to the premenopausal survivor population is the concern that systemic chemotherapy may cause acute amenorrhea and menopause, leading not only to hot flashes, vaginal dryness, and bone loss but also the possibility of loss of fertility. Premenopausal women with lung cancer may want children and should consult their healthcare providers about options for embryo and oocyte cryopreservation, the gold standard for fertility preservation.
The study included 182 premenopausal women (average age at diagnosis, 43 years). The Mayo Clinic Epidemiology and Genetics of Lung Cancer Research Program surveyed women between 1999 and 2016 at diagnosis and annually thereafter about their menstrual status. Types of lung cancer treatments were recorded, and frequencies of self-reported menopause at each survey were calculated.
Although the study is small, for the 85 women who received chemotherapy, 64% self-reported that they were menopausal within a year of diagnosis. Only 15% of the 94 patients who did not receive systemic therapy within a year of diagnosis experienced self-reported menopause. Three patients received targeted therapy alone, two of whom remained premenopausal at the final survey completed a median of 3 years after diagnosis. The results suggest that chemotherapy for patients with lung cancer increases the risk of the early loss of menses in survivors.
“Although more definitive research is needed, premenopausal women who need chemotherapy for lung cancer appear to have a similar risk of amenorrhea, early menopause, and loss of fertility as premenopausal women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer and lymphoma,” according to Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, executive director of NAMS. “I agree that premenopausal patients with lung cancer need to be educated about the risk for chemotherapy-related amenorrhea, menopause issues (hot flashes, vaginal dryness, and bone loss), and the potential loss of fertility before chemotherapy is initiated.”

North American Menopause Societyhttps://tinyurl.com/yd6gdokf

T2 Biosystems, maker of rapid diagnostic technology to aid in the detection of blood stream infections to prevent sepsis, will host an integrated symposium at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Amsterdam, Monday, April 15, 16:00-18:00 CET. The symposium, “Rapid diagnostics direct from whole blood: a solution for fast and appropriate antimicrobial therapy”, will feature leading clinicians and users of T2Direct Diagnostics™ who will discuss integrating the Company’s T2Bacteria^® and T2Candida^® Panels in clinical practice, and the product’s potential to significantly improve antimicrobial stewardship and infectious disease management in clinical settings.
The panels are the first and only FDA-cleared and CE-marked tests that identify the most serious bacterial and fungal pathogens directly from blood sample in just three to five hours, without waiting for a positive blood culture —which can take one to six or more days. These capabilities allow for faster species identification, enabling the potential for faster targeted treatment, de-escalation of empiric therapy and improved patient outcomes.
All T2Direct DiagnosticsTM panels are run on the T2Dx^® Instrument using a patient’s blood sample with validated clinical sensitivity of 91 to 96% and specificity of 98 to 99%. The direct from blood capability is enabled by the proprietary T2MR-powered T2Dx^® Instrument which can detect organisms at concentrations as low as 1 CFU/mL. This represents a thousandfold increase in sensitivity compared to products that detect species from positive blood culture bottles where the number of cells is typically in the range of 10,000 to 10,000,000 CFUs/mL.
T2 Biosystems recently received FDA Breakthrough Designation for the T2ResistanceTM Panel, a diagnostic panel that can detect 13 resistance genes from both gram-positive and gram-negative pathogens from a single patient blood sample in 3 to 5 hours. The T2Resistance Panel is also run on the T2Dx instrument and is expected to be CE-marked and available in Europe by the end of 2019, and offered as a Research Use Only product in the United States before yearend.  
T2 Biosystems will showcase its latest innovations at ECCMID at Booth #1.22.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) launched end of August the Big Beat Challenge, a unique research funding award that will bring together world-leading researchers and innovators to identify and solve any of the biggest problems in heart and circulatory disease.
Unveiled at this year’s European Society of Cardiology Congress in Munich, the £30 million award will be one of the largest and most ambitious of its kind; a challenge to scientists, clinicians, innovators and entrepreneurs to look beyond incremental gains and accelerate breakthroughs that could transform lives across the globe.
For more than half a century, BHF-funded researchers have pioneered world-leading efforts to understand the causes of heart and circulatory diseases and develop new methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Despite huge progress, the burden of heart and circulatory diseases continues to rise. Around the world, 18 million people die from heart and circulatory diseases each year. The WHO expects this to rise to 23 million by 2030.
The Big Beat Challenge will push the international research community to identify a real world challenge, significant unmet need or opportunity for game-changing innovation in heart and circulatory science or medicine. A problem or opportunity, which if solved or seized at scale, would mean major progress towards real patient benefit.
Proposals must be transformative, clinically relevant, and with a multi-disciplinary approach that couldn’t be done without funding on this scale. Ideas could transform the lives of a few, or provide a smaller but important change for many.
The winning team can come from any country, sector or discipline, working on a scale above and beyond traditional research schemes to achieve a truly revolutionary breakthrough in any heart or circulatory disease.
The BHF is assembling an international, multi-disciplinary, expert advisory panel to oversee the Big Beat Challenge. A call for outline applications will open at the end of 2018 and close in mid-2019. Shortlisted applications with the most promising ideas will be given seed funding, and teams will then have around six months to develop their final proposals. These full applications will then be peer-reviewed and the winning research programme recommended by the panel.
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the BHF: “We’ve made great progress over the last 60 years in understanding and tackling many heart and circulatory diseases, and I am proud that BHF-funded research has made a substantial contribution to this success. But heart and circulatory diseases remain a major health problem worldwide, still causing 1 in 3 deaths globally.
“The time is right for a radical approach. With recent advances in areas all the way from genome editing to artificial intelligence, we have an unprecedented opportunity to exploit new ways of doing research that moves beyond incremental gains and accelerates breakthroughs.
“This will be one of the largest awards of its kind. It is without borders and without boundaries. The winning project will be truly transformative, and something that simply couldn’t happen without funding on this scale. The ideas can tackle any heart or circulatory condition using any approach. All we ask is that you think big.”
bhf.org.uk/BigBeatChallenge