After The Loving

[Poobah_Johnny]

Many of you may know that treatment recently failed me.
My current concern is what will happen to my liver now?
Will the VL continue to rise or will it decline or level off?
Same questions regarding the enzymes.
(Please, I'm mostly interested in the VL aspect from this posting,
I would like to save 'progressing into liver disease' for a later time, thanks).

[Trinity4]

Correct James, utter nonsense.  James, you want to buy an ozonator?

[jusjames]

utter rubbish
alt going up does not equal vl going up, this is complete nonsense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hobo2]

Hello Johnny, You're concern with tracking your viral loads, so I'll give ya some input into this, based on my own experiences with having to overcome my stage4 HCV myself,
[since the doc's figured I was too high of a risk to take the interferon treatments and would be a gonner in less than 6 mos.]  thus had to become my own doc. so to speak...
   Anyway, as you probably already know, the viral load test is more expensive and your lab has to mail your blood vial off to have the RNA test done.  
  Your doctor can track your hep. progression with an "in-house" lab in the hospital by doing the normal liver panel blood work-up, that shows your ALT and AST liver functions.  The AST pretains to your liver, but can also be effected by a number of other factors too, that are not liver related...It's the ALT that reflects your liver enzymes primary..so that's the one that will tell you if your Viral Loads are starting to climb or staying down.
  As for your viral loads continuing to climb?  Sorry..they'll take off slowly and then start accelerating after awhile, the virus can mutate a number of times, that's why it's so hard to wipe it out, even with tx. but it can be done!  
  Wishing you a speedy recovery my friend!
  

[Trish77]

I think VL is more of an indicator and matters more when monitoring HIV than it does with HCV, where viral load matters little.  With HCV, either you have viral load or you don't and the amount is of little consequence - VL doesn't even correlate to liver damage.  It doesn't tell you affect much until you're doing treatment.  Liver enzymes are an indicator but not always accurate and not the best measure to go on.  If your liver damage is advanced, your liver enzymes may even drop into normal ranges as cell death decreases simply due to less cells available to die off. Taken in conjunction with a biopsy, they can paint a broader picture for you and would be part of the monitoring process as you go along. The article Bill suggested is a good one and I would agree that biopsy is your best monitoring tool.  

Have you had a biopsy?  Good luck with recovery from treatment, both mentally and physically.

Trish

[Poobah_Johnny]

Bill, MJ - Nice links thanks, it will take me a while to go through them.
MJ - The HIV/HCV site adds so many more issues to our situation.
James - I could think of a few other holidays I'd rather take!

[jusjames]

during tx your liver would of had a nice holiday , remember that !