Draco , Hemopurifier and some other stuff

[Keith_2008]

I have been doing some research recently after taking a long layoff of this website and the whole HepC virus thing. I was completely disengaged and discouraged after treatment. I was involved the Boceprevir trial at one point but eventually dropped out after I found out I was getting the placebo and not Boceprevir and I was still testing positive after week 17. The law of averages were working against me at that point and I was just sick and tired of popping pills and taking injections that would eventually wind up not working as I had hoped.

Some new research I found was Draco (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers) Found on these website.

http://www.gizmag.com/draco-antiviral-drug/19482/

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572

Draco was designed to eliminate viruses only. It enters the cell wall via a special protein and looks for a double stranded RNA (dsRNA), which is what many viruses have and humans do not. If it finds a dsRNA it uses another protein to activate a cell wall suicide also known as cellular suicide, which destroys the cell. It looks promising and is being compared; as Draco will be the virus killer as to what penicillin is to bacteria. Something like this could be a real miracle drug if it really comes together. I like the idea of it. I do not know if it will work on HepC though since HepC is a single stranded RNA. The structure of HepC might change as it tries to duplicate itself though and maybe become dsRNA at that point and then maybe Draco would work. I’m not sure about that yet.

Another thing I found was the Hemopurifier, which after some research I found that this has already been discussed about here on this website with many people weighing in on the subject. What puzzles me about it is the complete lack of faith or benefit it could have if people understood how it is designed to work. I got the feeling like many people on this site thought this was to replace the SOC therapy for which is not intended to be used that way at all or that this is just some snake oil for a company trying to make money. I don’t believe that either. I don’t know any snake oil companies that conduct trials at their expense in an attempt to profit.

The Hemopurifier is a blood filter that is used externally via a pump and some plastic tubing that simply takes your blood and pumps it though a small filter that is specifically designed to eliminate viruses by containing affinity agents that tightly bind to high-mannose structures unique to the surface of exosomes produced by cancer and glycoproteins residing on the envelope of viruses. These agents are immobilized around approximately 2800 porous hollow fibers that run the interior length of the device. So it is not a filter design by the means of a specific micrometer fiber but rather using certain agents that cling to certain types of surfaces or exosomes. You could think of it as a magnet design for which viral surfaces are trapped like fine magnetic particles that cling to a magnet. The blood is then returned back into your circulatory system.

So now the question is why would I want to use something like this? The purpose of the device is to eliminate as much of the virus as possible so that when SOC drugs are being used they can concentrate more on eliminating the virus in your liver as opposed to working on killing viruses in your circulatory system. The filter is to be used in conjunction with SOC treatment and not a replacement for SOC treatment. The idea is to eliminate as much of the virus as possible as quickly as possible. The quicker the virus can reach undetectable limits the quicker the SOC drugs can focus more on the few remaining viruses. This idea can and does lead to a higher success rate of SRV. One must remember that when treatment starts it is like going to war with the virus. As soon as you start to eradicate the virus from your body it is going to try every thing it can to stop you from doing that and it does it by attempting to mutate to something else or start multiplying a lot faster. If you can pull or filter out some of that virus it forces the remaining virus in your body to work harder. It simply puts a greater burden on the virus to try and stay alive. As the drugs do their part and begin to eliminate more and more of the virus there becomes more and more of a burden for that virus to stay alive. However the real trick is to eliminate the virus in its entirety. This is the one thing the virus has on it’s side because even if there is one cell left that is infected with HepC then the virus has a chance to stay alive and that cell could be located anywhere inside your body and not necessarily in your liver. The bottom line is you have to kill each and every cell that is infected with the HepC virus. Any failure to do this will result in a strong possibility of reinfection.

So as a therapeutic treatment I see that this filter may have some advantages. One advantage is that it helps remove the virus from your body, which is something everyone must do to reach SRV. Two it does not have the damaging side effects that the drugs have. You’re not ingesting a drug, your simply filtering blood. The lack of side effects has to be a bonus for everyone because if you are relying only on the drugs to do the job you better be ready for a potential longer treatment time and with longer side effects.

As reported on the manufacture website and I am not testifying it’s true but it simply states that if it does what the manufacture says it does then the patient could reach undetectable limits in as quickly as one week. Now how many of you with HepC would like that? I went 17 weeks on SOC treatment and was still having detectable amounts of HepC. Now I understand that some of you might reach undetectable limits much sooner but who knows whether you or someone else might do that. It’s a gamble to hope you can reach undetectable limits within 8 weeks to reach the rapid viral response (RVR) status and it is only RVR patients that have that 80% or more SRV status. For everyone else even on Boceprevir or Teleprevir the rates drop down to about 60 to 66% SRV, which is still better than the lousy forty percent range of SOC.

So from my perspective anything we can do to eradicate this virus from our system in the shortest amount of time has its best effects due to the fact that the shorter the time frame the shorter period of time the virus has to mutate into something that can defend itself against. The longer time it takes to clear the virus the more chances the virus can mutate and possibly build antibodies to any type of drugs you are using to kill the virus. So as you can see there are real advantages to kill this virus as quickly as possible once you decide to start treatment. It is therefore my conclusion that if this blood filter can help filter out the virus during the early stages of treatment there could be potentially some very positive effect in the treatment of HepC. This is of course only if this filter does what the manufacture suggest it does. I try to keep an open mind on the subject and I think that anything we can do to get rid of this virus is a good thing. I don’t know of anything that is a wonder or miracle drug when it comes to fighting this virus. It seems right now we have to try multiple drugs just to have any type of a chance to fight this virus off and even then the success rates are not very good and treatment times are way to long. When I find someone who can prescribe a bottle of pills that you take for ten days and the virus is gone then I can say we have a miracle drug. I am hoping the Draco can be that drug.


Good luck to all of you!

[thebadbambino]

http://www.eatg.org/news/167428/Aethlon_Medical_discloses_submission_of_hepatitis_C_virus_IDE_to_FDA

[willbb]

Actually the odds of progression speeding up once getting to the age of 50 are substantial...as shown in many studies.....again tho...good luck to you and  I hope 16 did the trick

Best

Will

[lynda607]

Good luck with stopping P/R early RonGilbert316.  That's less treatment time than geno 1's currently treating with triple therapy who RVR.  4 week PCR should be the tell all.

[RonGilbert316]

My questions were not intended to be taken as unsupportive. Just questions.

Thx for the post tho, and the facts on the 33%. Not as many as I thought there would be, but in my eyes not bad odds for someone who already has the odds in their favor at 50+ years old.

Again thx for the post and I will let you know when I meet with success or failure of my 16 wk tx.

[willbb]

I often wonder how many people destroyed their livers by drinking and smoking pot all their lives and now want to make it all better by getting rid of hep c?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  What has that got to do with anything....it matters not how anyone got HCV or why they want to get rid of it...the point is most people here DO want to rid themselves of the disease and are doing everything in their power to do just that.

If you choose to do things differently more power to you and everyone hopes you attain SVR...however maybe it would be best to offer folks your support that are going the distance rather than  suggest they are doing treatment just because the drug companies are  "pushing fear" as you say

Oh..I got some of thse facts for you that you don"t know about.....

In untreated patience with HCV: The median expected time to cirrhosis is 30 years(median meaning as many above as below)
33%  median expected time to cirrhosis is 50 years or never.

Personally I am thankful the  "fear mongering " drug companies  as you call them are on the case ...as I for one don"t want to gamble I am in the 33% minority.
Will

http://books.google.ca/books?id=X-gVSNDH7GcC&pg=PA511&lpg=PA511&dq=Thierry+Poynard+progression+of+fibrosis&source=bl&ots=4c5KSVCsI_&sig=fm4RUVSEThcaezw-qzJgnlRaBxU&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Thierry%20Poynard%20progression%20of%20fibrosis&f=false

[RonGilbert316]

Thx, will let you know if I make SVR or have to concider options for re-treating.

[James10500]

I wish.....good luck with SVR we're all pulling for you.

[RonGilbert316]

My post was posed as questions, and I clearly stated "I dont know the facts"

How's the refer habit going?

[James10500]

Huh the guy who had the nerve to tell others they were taking the easy way out by taking AD's while on tx to deal with the sx the drug companies warn you about. Had to stop treatment, because he couldn't handle it. Talk about taking the easy out !  What Doctor advised you to do that ? Oh that's right the docs and the drug companies conspire to make up diseases. Because after all HCV really doesn't harm the liver "it's the pot".

Tell yourself what ever you need to but as you said  ' you don't know the facts'

[curiouslady1]

You probably know this now Keith but there are studies where there is no placebo arm and everyone gets the medicine and everyone knows from the get go what arm they are in.  They are called open label.  I can't imagine going into a blinded study for something like this but I respect people who do and their contribution to medical science.  

[Aaron57]

I think you are mistaken about folks here response to Keith's decision to stop P/R Tx .. He was on the placebo (no Boce) which gave him P/R Tx only ... as far as i know, now the protocol on P/R (peg/riba) .. is if not Und at wk. 12 stop .. the odds  of achieving SVR if a late responder is too low to continue P/R Tx ... 72 wks Tx was pretty much a Tx of the past .. before the advent of PI's ..

[RonGilbert316]

Hi Keith, I dont think you will get much positive respose here about stopping tx. I agree with your decision NOT to continue as it was not likely to work. I dont understand why so many people volanteer to go 72 weeks and now some as much as double that. (except when trying to avoid a transplant) Most of the people here are pro-tx and pro-doctors advice. I quit early not because it didnt work but because it worked so well that I could not be convinced that I needed to keep taking it. I did start with zero liver damage so I do have the luxury of retreating if I relapse. I often wonder how many people destroyed their livers by drinking and smoking pot all their lives and now want to make it all better by getting rid of hep c? I just dont know the facts but I do think that cirrosis caused by hep c alone is a very small number. Why else would there be no information out there about what the statistics are? The drug companties push fear and tx 24/7 but stay completely silent about the group of people who do not need to treat. I believe I represent the silent majority who would do fine without treating. But then again, it seems imposable to know if I was just lucky or the fact that I chose to live pot-free, alcohol-free, drug-free and such, kept my liver healthy in spite of having hep c for as many as 40 years?

Back to you Keith, Im so sorry you were unresponsive to the drugs. I agree that the day should come quickly where we can take an anti-viral like we do a anti-biotic and be done with it in 10 days. Im suspicious that the drug companies have prevented such a thing from coming out until their patents expire which is usually 13 years. Again, I dont have any facts about this but I do wonder if drug sales are not more important than cures to the drug companies?

[Aaron57]

The Draco viral eradication is brand new , just discovered , I posted here about it a few weeks ago .. It is being researched at MIT ... but still very far from being released to the public ... The HP , I have been following closely ... it has started a small FDA Clinical Trials in India thi year , and it may be trialed in the states sometime next year .. japan approved and subsidizes the medical device DFPP blood filter system in 2008 for HCV / cirrhotic patients .. but not in the states ...

Unfortunately neither one of these will help us here at this time ... Hopefully in the near future !

Good luck !