treatment options

Hello Dr. My husband is a liver transplant patient with hepc. He has been on interferon and ribavarin for 80 weeks and the doctors want to take him off because they say he is a nonresponder. They also said that if he stays on he could have autoimmune hepatitis. Do you have any knowledge about this? Also if he goes back on treatment does he have a better chance of clearing the disease? Sicnce he is a transplant patient they only have him on 0.4 mcg interferon and 800 mg of ribavarin, can't they just up the medication?
I'm sorry doctor, I forgot to ask one more question. My husband doctor said that transplanted livers that go into hepc patients only last about 5 years. I know every case is individual but he said that is an average.  Is this true?

Thank you for your time,    Ruth

[Thomas D Schiano, MD]

liver can last a lot loner than that.  50% of people can develop cirrhosis within 10 years of liver transplantation from recurrent HCV.  I do not think he needs the ribavirin at this point but would consider continuing the interferon as maintenance therapy especially if he has advanced fibrosis on liver biopsy.