Continue Treatment What else can be done?

[John]

I was diagnosed in March 1999.  At that time my Alt's were 110 and my AST's were 61.  Biopsy in May 1999.  The doctor said I was stage two chronic HCV, with mild to moderate infalamation and mild fibrosis.  My doctor focused on the pathologist's report and thought I had "some" fibrosis" which he said was potentially reversible in nature and all in all the he said the biopsy rflected little liver damage presently. My viral load was very high in March 1999, 7,700,000. I started the combo therapy in July.  Aside from the fact that my bilirubin elevated while on the combo  and that I seemed to develop a little cough, combo therapy had no side effects at all for me.  I really never felt any better.   I took the medicine without any side effects at all.   But at the end of 6 months, I was genotyped as 1a, and I was a non responder.  While my liver enzemes dropped to:   ALT's 50 to 52, and my AST's dropped to 31, my viral load dropped very little, only about 25% to 5,600,000.  Even though my doctor said that these were very poor results, he said he has had a few 1a's whose viral load dropped dramatically in weeks 24 to 36, so I am back on combo until about the end of April 2000, which will be week 36. (As I said, combo is no problem for so far.)  My questions: for a non responder what can I do?  Is there any hope for a response on an inteferon based medicine given that all the other treatments (Infergen, Peg, Peg with Ribavirin, etc.) are interferon based and the interferon based combo has not worked for me(yet), and looks like it will not work?   Can you predict what medicine may be next after Peg and Peg with ribavirin and when?  Will HCV be whipped in the next 10 years?  And finally what can I do (a 45 year old male in otherwise good health, 5 mile a day runner (every day), non smoker non drinker etc.) to nurse my liver along?  Will the milk thisle help (I know about the problems of herbal remedies) and is there anything else at all, anything, I can do?    Thanks so much for your time.