Hepatitis C sufferer credits clinical trial at SLU for her recovery from disease
by Rebecca Perlow
10-26-2007

Rhoda Hutchings with Dr. Bruce Bacon

Rhoda Hutchings certainly doesn’t look like a chronically ill woman. Smiling broadly, the West County native’s gold hoop earrings wave slightly as she runs her fingers through short, graying hair.

“My hair got really thin [after the treatment]. I used to have really long, very straight hair. After I cut it, as it grew back it had body to it and it’s wavy without me having to curl it,” Hutchings said. Later she laughed, “There’s two good things about this treatment: I lost weight and got great hair!”

Hutchings, 57, was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2001. After enrolling as a research patient at Saint Louis University, she was declared virus free by her doctors last May.

Hepatitis C is a blood borne, highly infectious viral disease that is caused by a hepatotropic virus. As it progresses, the virus causes cirrhosis, liver cancer and eventually, death. The virus is spread by blood-to-blood contact with an infected person.

“It’s a very insidious disease,” Hutchings said. “You could be walking down the beach barefoot, step on a piece of glass that someone who has the disease handled and if there’s dried blood on it, you could contract the disease.”

According to the American Gastroenterological Association journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, approximately 70 to 80 percent of persons infected will develop chronic hepatitis. Chronic Hepatitis C is defined as infection with the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) persisting for more than six months. It is often asymptomatic and it is mostly discovered many years after infection.

“I’d had it for about 20 years before it was picked up,” Hutchings said.

Because Hepatitis C attacks the liver, the consumption of alcohol for an infected person is the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a flame. “My saving grace, according to my doctor, was that I never really drank,” she remembered. “I had just developed a taste for wine when I was diagnosed so I was not happy.”

Hutchings, a nurse at St. John’s Mercy since 1982, began work at the hospital in 1976. St. John’s paid for her hospital-based nursing training at Missouri Baptist. It’s believed she contracted the virus through her work at the hospital.

“It’s the luck of the draw. You know when you go into the medical profession what the risks are,” Hutchings said. “The cards are on the table and not just for nurses.”

St. John’s Mercy does not conduct liver research, but Saint Louis University does. Shortly after her diagnosis, Hutchings called the university to see if any clinical trials were going on for treating HCV.

“I thought ‘well, if I’m going to die, I’m going to help some people before I’m dead.’ That’s one of the scariest thing I’ve ever done — to leave a hospital and an environment where you’re familiar and go into the unknown.”

Hutchings first participated in a year-long clinical trial of pegalated Interferon for treatment of chronic Hepatitis C. Interferon, an immunomodulator made by the body, is administered in doses higher than what the body makes, rearranging the immune system slightly in order to fight HCV. During the first trial, Hutchings participated in administered pegalated Interferon once a week but was unresponsive to treatment.

“I didn’t have the real funky side effects some people have [with Interferon],” Hutchings said. “I know people on the pegalated Interferon that take their shot and are in bed for days.”

This recent trial administered Infergen, or Consensus Interferon, in a daily injection with two ribavarin pills. Ribavarin is an anti-viral medication shown to be effective in enhancing response to Interferon in patients with Hepatitis C.

“If you look at the data of Interferon alone versus Interferon plus ribavarin, you see an enhanced response in the ribavarin. So the two work together,” Dr. Bruce Bacon, Director of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at SLU, said.

Bacon served as the principal investigator for both the St. Louis and national research site. The national study enrolled 450 patients, approximately 30 of them at SLU, all diagnosed with chronic Hepatitis C. In the clinical trial, 10 percent of chronic Hepatitis patients who previously hadn’t responded to treatment responded to the combined use of Infergen and ribavarin. There was a 30 to 40 percent response among patients with milder liver disease who’d shown some sensitivity to Interferon in prior treatment.

The results of the three-year trial are being presented at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston next month.

There are some side effects to the treatment. Hutchings has had problems with her eyesight and lost feeling in the outside of her legs. Interferon has also destroyed her thyroid, so she takes Synthroid to restore it. Still, she remains enthusiastic about her recovery and is determined to make people aware of the treatment available for the virus.

“I think this is a drug that people could use and work and keep going on with their life. I love the drug because it cured me and I have a second chance at life.

You can e-mail Rebecca Perlow at ladyjane52983@hotmail.com.

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