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Hepatitis Tie-Up: Roche will promote Merck’s newly approved hepatitis C drug Victrelis alongside two of its own therapies used against the virus as part of a non-exclusive U.S. marketing agreement that could expand to other countries, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The market for hepatitis C drugs is expected to heat up further if the FDA approves a competitor to Victrelis made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson, which those companies plan to market as Incivek.

As we noted a few years ago, the same antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV infection and AIDS are also being eyed as a way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Researchers at the University of Utah went looking for XMRV in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and came up empty-handed.

Endo Buys: Endo Pharmaceutical Holdings will pay about $2.6 billion in cash for American Medical Systems, which makes minimally invasive products to treat men’s and women’s pelvic health conditions, the WSJ reports. The purchase price includes the assumption of $312 million in debt.

Scientific conferences can sometimes be boring events, filled with talks that run over the allotted time, text-dense slides and debate that is so civil it is often hard to tell there is disagreement. But that’s not the case when the topic of the virus XMRV is on the table.

Even though measles has been officially wiped out in the U.S., every year a handful of Americans head overseas and come back with the virus as a not-so-pleasant souvenir. And some of those travelers are young kids — particularly scary, since they’re at greater risk for a severe bout with the disease or serious complications.

In early April, the National Institutes of Health will hold a scientific workshop on the still-mysterious chronic fatigue syndrome, attempting to suss out the potential biological causes of the disease.

In the ongoing effort to understand XMRV and related retroviruses, a key concern has been assessing whether a risk exists to the nation’s blood supply. In separate reports published online in the journal Transfusion, two task forces working on the issue say there’s still no conclusive answer.

Human Papilloma Virus is one of the leading causes of cervical cancer in women but a new report has found that 50 percent of men could be carriers of the virus. Video courtesy of Fox News.

Here is the original:  50% of Men Could Be Carriers of HPV/a>

The study suggests that in these monkeys, at least, the virus can be difficult to detect in blood, even though it’s taken root in the body.

Original post: XMRV: Study Shows Virus Can Cause ‘Persistent Infection’ in Monkeys