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Experimental
treatment cures
Honolulu woman
of hepatitis C
Helen Will 'was really going
By Helen Altonn
down the tube' until her liver
was found virus-free after
'tough treatment'
Star-BulletinA 43-year-old Honolulu woman is the first person believed cured of hepatitis C in a national study testing experimental drug dosages.
"It was tough but it was worth it," said Helen Will, describing horrible side effects. But her cure came faster than with standard treatments.
Dr. Naoky Tsai, medical director of the Liver Center at St. Francis Medical Center, is directing the study, involving 10 other centers in Washington, Alaska and Oregon.
"There are many cure stories in my office," Tsai said. However, he said Will "is one of them who is unusual because we only treated her for four months."
A former TV producer, Will was one of 55 people in the trial at the Liver Center.
She said she was diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease in 1992 on the mainland, and a doctor told her not to worry about it.
She did not realize hepatitis C was life-threatening or could involve a liver transplant until seeing a TV documentary in 1997, she said.
She was in northern Virginia then, working as a free-lance sports video producer.
She said she had her blood tested and discovered how sick she was. She went to another doctor who said if he had seen her earlier, he would have taken a liver biopsy and put her on interferon shots three times a week.
She was preparing to move back to Hawaii with her mother, so she waited and "began the big hunt for the right doctors here" in November 1997, she said. Her research here led her to Tsai and Angie Coste, research nurse in the Liver Center.
Her case was moderate, but she "was really going down the tube," Tsai said. "Her liver was pretty close to cirrhosis."
Will was in a random group in the clinical trial that entailed giving herself a shot of a maximum dose of 5 million units of interferon and taking five ribavarin pills every day.
She only lasted four days, she said. "It was so awful and I only weighed 90 pounds."
After a one-month break, Tsai cut her interferon dosage in half and put her on antidepressants, Will said, "which I highly recommend because it's tough treatment."
The treatment is designed for six months, she said, "but he took me off after four since I was getting so beat up."
Her blood was tested then and again six months later, in February, and no virus was found. "This is, in my book, called a cure," Tsai said, explaining there is a 97.5 percent chance she will remain free of the virus.
Tsai said data shows 40 percent of patients treated with the standard ribavarin therapy are cleared of the virus. He hopes the current study leads to a treatment that has an even higher success rate.
No vaccine is available for hepatitis C, a chronic infection that can cause fatal liver disease, and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Americans die of it each year.
Will felt so lousy nine months ago that she could not do anything, she said. Now, she is playing an hour of tennis and swimming every other day, and she hopes to get back into television work.
"I feel great," she said. "It's like I kind of had to come home to get cured."
