Undetected

Dr Dietrich
  I am a type 3a and I finished 6 months of treatment on March 8th. I had a Viral Load done after 12 weeks of treatment that was Undetected. My next Viral Load was at the end of treatment (5 days after my last shot of interferon) and it came back with 940 IU/mL.  
  I thought this was strange so I asked my GI for another Viral Load test and 6 weeks later I had it done. It came back Undetected. This is 6 weeks post treatment. Is this common. Have you ever seen this occur before. To have the Virus come back at the end of treatment only to have it disappear again when I am no longer taking Inteferon.
In your opinion could the lov Viral Load at the end of TX have been a false positive or some type of contamination.

Thanks
Bobby

[Douglas Dieterich, MD]

This is a classic case of a false positive PCR result. It is a laboratory probablem and we see it all the time. The false positives are almost always at the low levels like that where HCV does not normally live. There is about a 5% false positive rate with most PCR's. That is the reason that you should never make life or health-changing decisions based on only one PCR.  Congrats sounds like you are well on your way to a cure! DTD

[zazza]

I believe it is important to mention the sensitivity of the viral load test that came back detectable with 940 IU/ml after Bobby's treatment was ended. If I remember correctly it had the sensitivity of 615 IU/ml.