Hepatitis Researcher - Question about Interferon

[geterdone]

HR,
At what point after abruptly stopping the synthetic INF and past the seven day peak and down curve does the body’s chemistry begin to readjust to the absents of the higher interferon levels. Is there a chain of events that takes place in the biological chemistry because of this abrupt stoppage, pertaining to any remaining virions that may have escaped the steady pounding of the artificially high interferon levels and is there a cellular signaling process taking place with in the remaining virions that these chemical changes are taken place or have taken place? From what time interval from INF stoppage to mass replication process, Hours, days or weeks?  

Thanks
jasper

[geterdone]

Willing, again Thank You for the links and the brief explanation of each link and are of a tremendous help to me as to the reverse spin of phase one.

jasper

[willing]

as far as I can tell, very little is known about the mechanics/kinetics of viral rebound. On the other hand, the effects of soc on the viral population at the start of treatment have been studied in great detail, eg

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10971860

There seems to be some argument about whether viral decline plays out in two or three distinct phases, eg

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17596864

but it seems near-everyone agrees that the first phase, when the ifn first hits and exerts a dramatic suppression on viral reproduction, lasts from 24-48 hous after the 1st shot.

The relapse rebound is obviously much  harder to study, but, by extension from the above, once the ifn-suppression is discontinued it would be reasonable to expect something like the reverse of phase one. That is reproduction in the remaining infected cells should be back to business as usual within a couple of days. Given that the number of  infected cells at eot is presumably pretty low, getting from there to measurable vl should take a while longer.