Is Hepatitis c the Rocky Balboa of the viral kingdom?

[St. George]

I recently posted that my doctor called with my 17 week vrl result and I was informed that I was down to a wimpy 508 viral copies(I started with  a vrl of 37 million).  My question to everyone here is how can so few copies maintain themselves in the presence of the onslaught of these powerful drugs.  What mechanism do they uses to hang on?  NyGirl stated that her vrl stayed around 400 copies for months, which to me is weird because why cant the drugs just finish kicking ass. Any insight anyone?

[tulsatime]

Hey, Thanks I needed to hear that. Hope you are doing well and your skin problems are better as well. I have developed rosea from last treatment also. I read a lot of your post for possible help for me. Thanks for all your help. Have a great weekend! Debi

[tulsatime]

With all this talk I got out my tests and now I am freaking out. When I started treatment last time it said
3380000 IU/ml
That means it was 3 mil. I was und all the way through treatment and on my 6 mo post test it was
36900000 IU/ml That means 36 mil. For some reason I thought it was 3 mil again but how in the heck it got that high after treatment scares the blank out of me. I know viral load goes up and down but it still is freaking me out. Please tell me again viral load don't matter!!  Debi

[Ladybug72837]

Omg!!! My son told me about 9 months ago he has Hep C, and he's in prison. They won't allow us to send him any meds!!! I am NOW so worried about him!!! He is trying to eat good, but c'mon, he's in prison and no one cares about them!!! They always get **** food, and are always starving! He is my only son....will he b ok for another 1 1/2 yr?????

[jmjm530]

GO: Mine VL went from 72 mil to 1.8 mil in 12 wks and then back to 2.9 mil at wk 24, ALL WHILE ON TX!
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It sounds to me that you had what is called a viral breakthrough while on treatment. It is not that uncommon but does call for re-evaluation of continuing treatment or at least re-evaluation of the treatment approach. If you haven't already, you might want to consult with another liver specialist (hepatologist) on how best to proceed.

-- Jim

[jmjm530]

It doesn't matter in the sense that your liver isn't necessarily worse off after a relapsed treatment than before. In fact, there's a good chance your liver is a little better off although not sure how long that lasts. From what I've heard viral load will often sky rocket if someone relapses but as others have said, it goes up and down seemingly irrespecitve of liver damage.

-- Jim

[GrandOak]

It depends upon whether you are talking about total copies in your system or the copies per a sampling of your blood.  As Jim pointed out, the sampling measurement needs to be multiplied by the factor which equates the sample to the total amount of blood in your system (for instance if you sample a cup and the total amount is say 2 gallon, then you take the measurement of copies per cup and multiple it by the number of cups in 2 gallons to extrapolate the number of copies per cup to the number of copies in the system).

So you need to take the PCR measured in IU per ML and multiple it by the total ML of blood in your system to get the total copies of virus, as measured in IU/ML by the test, in your system.

[GrandOak]

Mine VL went from 72 mil to 1.8 mil in 12 wks and then back to 2.9 mil at wk 24, ALL WHILE ON TX!  For me it has not been the Rocky but the Alien of the viral kingdom which will start crawling into the engine exhaust even when flushed into deep space.

For me the concern is that the dang dragon mutates and becomes resistent to the tx or worse overcomes the blood to blood only transfer and evolves from an epidemic to a pandemic (much like they suspect now to be the case with the origin of Avian Flu).  I've been told that there has been no indication of this occurring within the medical community to date, but then again I've also been told that such a large VL increase during tx has not been common either.

I only pray that I am not becoming the Typhoid Mary (or would it be Typhoid Harry in my case ;-) were this mutation is occuring.