Scientists have developed a new way to treat liver failure by dampening the immune response using stem cells taken from the bone marrow.

Therapy to slow down liver damage

So far the technique has only been tested in animals, but if it works in humans it could help save lives.

Potentially a patient could be kept alive longer until a donor organ is found - and the liver would be given the maximum chance to repair itself.

The Massachusetts General Hospital work features in the journal PLOS One.

Italian researchers have evaluated the risk of sexual transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection among 895 monogamous heterosexual partners of HCV chronically infected individuals in a long-term prospective study.

Researchers at MIT and Rockefeller University have successfully grown hepatitis C virus in otherwise healthy liver cells in the laboratory, an advance that could allow scientists to develop and test new treatments for the disease.

They're the overlooked viruses: Hepatitis B and C together infect three to five times more Americans than the AIDS virus does, and most don't know it.  In the next 10 years, these two liver-damaging infections will kill about 150,000 people in the U.S. alone, says a new report Monday from the prestigious Institute of Medicine.

FRIDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified two
cellular proteins that play an important role in hepatitis C infection,
and they say the finding may point to new and less toxic treatments for
the disease, which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer.

FRIDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Caffeine in coffee reduces the
severity of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus,
a new study has found.

The predictive potential was very high, as judged by area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic (AUC) analysis, which was more than 0.8 from week 4. In particular, the validity at week 24 was more than 0.85 of AUC. The positive predictive value (PPV) of the formula were better at weeks 12 and 24 than the prediction with viral kinetics, and the negative predictive value (NPV) of the formulae were better at weeks 4 and 12. Evaluation of the formulae using data from the test patients revealed a very high AUC value of more than 0.85.