too early to celebrate?

Hello, my husband is in his 6th week of treatment. We just got his viral load back and it dropped from over 3 million to 71. We feel like it is such good news, but don't want to get too excitied just yet. Has anyone had such a large drop in their viral load in such a short time?

Thanks!!

[nygirl7]

It is good news - the best news would have been to be UND at week 4 but at this rate he is looking at hopefully any day which is great.  The closer you get to UND early on the better the chances of success. The later the worse. Most likely this means he is on target for a full course of treatment (I don't know if he is a 1 or a 2 or a 3 or whatever but either 24 or 48 weeks) but without extending as long as he doesn't have a viral breakthrough.


Wishing you the best of luck with it and UND for him any day!

[06yuya]

thank you...that is encouraging. So I am to understand that his viral load needs to be UND during treatment? We were under the impression that it wouldn't be UND until the treatment was finished...

[nygirl7]

It needs to hit UND by week 12 in order for him to maintain his current schedule, if he is not UND by 12 he will most likely have to extend to week 72 and if he doesn't reach UND by week 24 then he will most likely stop.

The trick is to not let the virus come back in during treatment - one of the reasons we continue to treat so long AFTER we are UND is to train our bodies to fight off any remaining virus that doesnt show up in the blood level. It could still be in your body though think of it it is a tiny virus and doesn't just show in your blood. That is why if you are UND after week 4 you still should continue to week 48 (or whatever you are scheduled to), to avoid breakthrough.

The the big trick is to not have it come back after you stop all the meds completely. That is known as relapse. it happens with a geno1 about 50% of the time (that you don't get to UND, have breakthrough or relapse).  That is why it's so damn difficult.

That's about as simply as I could put it and I hope it makes sense! But it's why we don't stop treatment the minute we get to UND - there is an awful lot more riding on it then just hitting that benchmark.


But when you are one of the lucky ones to get to SVR - it's totally worth it.