Aa
Alcohol and HCV...an unanswered question.
Here is a curveball, along with an article regarding the highprevalance of HCV in alcoholics. See link below.
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jun2003/niaaa-26.htm
This is an issue that I have discussed with several HCV doctors, with no clear answer to my questions. The article, as well as several others I have reviewed lately, indicates the abnormally high number of heavy drinkers, alcoholics, etc. that are HCV positive. Often this is within populations with no known risk factors, and no past IVDU history. My big question, which I have wondered about for years, is WHY does this seem to be the case. Why would heavy alcohol users seem prone to developing HCV??? Unless, of course, they are all lying, and happen to also have risk factors which they now deny. I think there is much more to this mystery, which still baffles the medical community.
Along with my concerns about persistent HCV after SVR, is another concern which many of you have responded to in the past when I have posed this issue. Could there be HCV transmission in the general population, on a much larger scale than suspected, that is not in the bloodstream or liver. In effect, a 'latent' tissue, or glandular infection which remains latent or suppressed, until a major stimulus causes it to 'explode' into the bloodstream. This theory would help explain the great numbers of HCV cases worldwide that have no known risk factors.
Could there be a somewhat 'dormant' viral infection in a large portion of our population, within organs like salivary system, sexual organs , membranes, CNS, etc.??? (cont. below)
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jun2003/niaaa-26.htm
This is an issue that I have discussed with several HCV doctors, with no clear answer to my questions. The article, as well as several others I have reviewed lately, indicates the abnormally high number of heavy drinkers, alcoholics, etc. that are HCV positive. Often this is within populations with no known risk factors, and no past IVDU history. My big question, which I have wondered about for years, is WHY does this seem to be the case. Why would heavy alcohol users seem prone to developing HCV??? Unless, of course, they are all lying, and happen to also have risk factors which they now deny. I think there is much more to this mystery, which still baffles the medical community.
Along with my concerns about persistent HCV after SVR, is another concern which many of you have responded to in the past when I have posed this issue. Could there be HCV transmission in the general population, on a much larger scale than suspected, that is not in the bloodstream or liver. In effect, a 'latent' tissue, or glandular infection which remains latent or suppressed, until a major stimulus causes it to 'explode' into the bloodstream. This theory would help explain the great numbers of HCV cases worldwide that have no known risk factors.
Could there be a somewhat 'dormant' viral infection in a large portion of our population, within organs like salivary system, sexual organs , membranes, CNS, etc.??? (cont. below)
Hi, your post really touched me. As for me, I'm done blaming that silly kid that I was, for the most part, cept when I fall off my stool. Kinda non-productive and I feel bad enough sometimes without adding my past to it the equation. I just didn't have many tools or coping mechanisms back then, that's for sure. I know I sound like I'm giving us all a big giant "Pass Go" ticket, but I do think that back then...they just didn't know what they know now about some of the drugs we were experimenting with. Well heroin maybe, but I didn't like that stuff - hated throwing up.
Not that the extra knowledge would of stopped "baby me", but it sure might of slowed me down a bit, specially the hep c. Do you remember when so many people were saying that coke was the "super achiever" drug? The drug of champions? Fast forward to crawling around a carpet looking for specs. Oh well, past is history, future is fantasy, no time like the present. I hope you get some answers youre looking for, and that you feel better soon.
Not that the extra knowledge would of stopped "baby me", but it sure might of slowed me down a bit, specially the hep c. Do you remember when so many people were saying that coke was the "super achiever" drug? The drug of champions? Fast forward to crawling around a carpet looking for specs. Oh well, past is history, future is fantasy, no time like the present. I hope you get some answers youre looking for, and that you feel better soon.
I have to say I'm a product of the seventies too. Sex, drugs, rock, and roll. But I have to say I knew when I had viral hep. I had had Hep A when I was 12 so it wasn't hard to see or feel the same signs. What's is bad is that I was told non-A-non B and inactive after everything was over with. So 6 yrs after that turned up with kidney disease. Never once have I been told until now that Hep C causes the kind of kidney disease I have, so 30 yrs later need a kidney. And there's only out of about 1 of so many thousands that develop kidney disease, what's so bad these drs knew I had did drugs my arms and veins were destroyed but no one every mentioned checking for the Hep again, till started testing for transplant. Then got shock of my life. They told me I would be better off on dialysis for 15 yrs, then transplanted for 5, which are the odds they give with hep c transplants. I know I'm rambling but sometimes especially when I'm reading the other posts I feel so bad, who could have known what could come of all that, we were young and immortal. So now I'm fighting with everything I've got and it sounds like alot of others are fighting too. Hope we all do good. Just having small pity party. Take care Linda
In 1980, San Francisco; I was diag. with non-A/non-B hep, I thought I was cured.
Me too pal!
Me too pal!
What blows my mind as to transmission is why more regular IVDU's aren't multi-genotype/subtype/quasispecies-infected. Honest to god I had one single iv stick w/ two users, so I guess my viral pool was their viral pool. (Venice Beach, '80-82, 2b, f 48y/o 1/1 13/24)
Of course so many people shared $100 bills; why am I not multi-infected from that?
Of course so many people shared $100 bills; why am I not multi-infected from that?
Responses very much appreciated!! I enjoy the input, and opinions. Again, my comments were very speculative, and by no means presented as a firm belief...only a suspiscion...and an explanation of an odd set of statistics. Bear in mind, I was not saying HCV transmits to the blood by sexual contact, or other tissue contact....only that it might remain in compartmentalized tissues, as a latent infection. Only in extreme cases (the heavy alcoholic) would it then cross the blood barrier. This was my speculative theory...and I am not at all claiming that this must be happening. Only a potential, possible answer to the puzzling fact that many alcoholics seem to be HCV+.
Of course, they may have become infected through typical blood to blood contact, and might have a tendency to be less than truthful about IVDU issues, etc. I agree with all the above comments, but the answers to this question are not at all clear, as the article points out. There are lots of things relating to this virus that still seem to baffle the researchers, and the HCV medical community. One by one, we will want to find the 'exact' answers to all of them. I remain an optomist...but still have lots of questions and concerns...based on my own experiences, and observations of others out there...along with what I am reading in the past few years.
I am really hoping that research proves that HCV is 'gone', eradicated entirely from our bodies after we get a solid SVR, and that the odd findings that have been cropping up in research studies, are all explained by some 'viral remnant' or 'viral memory' type reasoning. Maybe there is no cause for concern at all. But the jury is still out.
And on some questions (such as tissue to tissue transmission) the jury is not even in the courtroom. There are no real questions being raised around this issue at all, so maybe it is not really an issue.....at all. Let's hope.
DoubleDose
Of course, they may have become infected through typical blood to blood contact, and might have a tendency to be less than truthful about IVDU issues, etc. I agree with all the above comments, but the answers to this question are not at all clear, as the article points out. There are lots of things relating to this virus that still seem to baffle the researchers, and the HCV medical community. One by one, we will want to find the 'exact' answers to all of them. I remain an optomist...but still have lots of questions and concerns...based on my own experiences, and observations of others out there...along with what I am reading in the past few years.
I am really hoping that research proves that HCV is 'gone', eradicated entirely from our bodies after we get a solid SVR, and that the odd findings that have been cropping up in research studies, are all explained by some 'viral remnant' or 'viral memory' type reasoning. Maybe there is no cause for concern at all. But the jury is still out.
And on some questions (such as tissue to tissue transmission) the jury is not even in the courtroom. There are no real questions being raised around this issue at all, so maybe it is not really an issue.....at all. Let's hope.
DoubleDose
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