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Elixir

An antiviral drug, which was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treating AIDS, has been found to have the potential to treat chronic hepatitis B infection too. Lamivudine, or 3TC, .the drug manufactured by the Glaxo Wellcome group under the brand name Epivir, is reported to have cured 20 hepatitis B patients at the Massachusettes General Hospital in the US.

Hepatitis B is a kind of liver disease usually transmitted through sexual contact or contaminated needles. So far, the only treatment has been interferon (the protein released by the body's immune system in response to an invading virus). Interferon injections, however, have side effects that the new drug hardly has.

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