Infergen Information

[Easywriter2222]

Does anyone know anything about Infergen?
I am on my second tx of Pegasys and its not working. I drove two hours down to Louisville and spoke to a DR Cecil and he suggested that I try Infergen. Does anyone have any information about this drug. How is it taken, how often, what are the side effects? The Dr said that the effective rate is only about 20 % but I have few options left.

Thanks

[hdkash]

I have been in treatement for a litte over 9 monhts, 4 months on Peg Interon and 4 months on Infregen. The side effects that hit me the hardest have been on-going lack of sleep and headaches (no taking Nasonex for allergay seemed to help there) and general fatigue. There many days I come home from work and and that's all I can do. I do still get a decent amount of days and hours in but still miss work or work from home.

My Viral load started out very low (180,000) but I was a heavy drinker (1 ltr a day of vodka)so my liver is considered late stage 3 or early stage 4. After 4 monhts of weekly Peg I get down to 48,000 and we switched to daily Infergen. 1 Month later it was around 20,000. My enzyems are looking much better althoug my hemoglobin droppped to the anemiac stage so I was put on weekly Procritt. This raised me up into the 11's but now I am droppoing back into the 10s, I will probably go to twice a week for procrit.

In April we will check my PCR and make a decision ontreatment.

I cam live with this and feel like I making progress. If this is what I have to do to be there for my family after doing stupid things when I was younger I will do it.

Advice - weight based Ribavarin dosage daily, Effexor daily, take the Infergen late in the aftrenoon daily and if your Hemoglobin drops into the 11 to 12 range talk to your Dr about procrit.

If you have other questions or just feel like talking about it, lrt mr know

[Lonestar823]

Yes, I think there are three or four of us who post here occasionally who used Infergen and are SVR.  Infergen does have a bad reputation for sides.  I lived with them, barely. ; ]  There are also others here currently treating with it.  You can write to me any old time and I'll do my very best to answer any questions.

[Marl37]

I was on Infergen for the past 10 months.  It's a daily shot and unfortunately I had terrible side effects - lost most of my hair, no energy and lost 36 lbs.  On the positive side, I was able to work from home since I work in IT.  As long as I didn't have to move around much I was okay.  Loss of energy was the hardest part.  I didn't have the energy to stand for very long.  And my viral load didn't drop enough - they decided since I was having such bad side effects it was time to stop the treatment.  But, this doesn't mean you will react the same way.  I would suggest that you try the treatment.  Fortunately for me, I switched to a Hep doctor and he said my liver at this point my liver is working well on it's own and I have time to wait for the new treatments.  Good luck and let me know how it goes.