Although I only knew him from our interview, I wish I could’ve talked to Tary Owens about music instead of hepatitis C. Owens died in 2003 after suffering from hepatitis C, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease. He graciously discussed his health problems with me one summer afternoon in 1998 for the Chronicle, at his house east of town on the banks of the Colorado River.
Interspersed with all the disease talk were anecdotes about Janis Joplin and bluesmen Grey Ghost and Long John Hunter that could’ve been stories in themselves. As a music historian, former drug abuser, and longtime local advocate for people with HIV, Owens was well-positioned to gauge the potential impact of hepatitis C on the music community.
“HIV really hit the arts community hard, especially the dramatic arts,” he said. “Hepatitis C is now hitting the music community, and I think a lot of what’s behind that is the romantic crap about drugs that goes back to Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, and later, Ray Charles. So many young musicians felt if they wanted to express themselves musically, they had to follow in the footsteps of the people they idolized.”
Owens was also prescient enough to know how hepatitis C could be marginalized if it was perceived as a disease of “drug addicts and criminals.” Many potential hepatitis C infections could be prevented and millions in treatment costs saved if injecting drug users had ready access to clean syringes, but the Texas Legislature failed to find the political will to legalize needle exchange programs in 2005.
Increased awareness of hepatitis C and its risk factors have prompted many to get tested. From 2000 to 2004, the Texas Department of State Health Services recorded some 8,890 newly diagnosed cases of hepatitis C in Travis County alone. Many more people don’t know they have the infection. Those with undiagnosed hepatitis C may unknowingly pass it to others while also missing out on the potential benefits of early treatment.
“If you get treated as a younger person, you have a higher chance of clearing the virus,” says Heather Guerrero, manager of the Houston-based Texas Liver Coalition. “We don’t really know why. It might be because they’re younger, more robust.”
Since its approval in 1998, the standard hepatitis C treatment of interferon and ribavirin has been improved upon. Better than half of the people with the most common hepatitis C genotype in the U.S. now respond to treatment. New medications in development may further improve response while mitigating the often-formidable side effects of the current regimen. “Ten years ago, we only had a 10 percent to 20 percent sustained response,” says Dr. Imtiaz Alam, medical director of the Austin Hepatitis Center.
For now, physical and psychological side effects continue to be a major challenge. “Depression is not uncommon,” Alam says. “Almost 60 percent of our patients go on anti-depressants.”
Hepatitis C support groups help many patients cope by learning from others who have already been through treatment. “In the end,” Alam asserts, “most everyone will say, ‘Yes, I went through hell, but it was well worth it.'”
To learn more about hepatitis C prevention, testing, and treatment, contact the organizations above, center.
This article appears in November 24 • 2006.
