Relapsers after 6 months?

[Pinksmything]

I keep hearing that after 6 months UND/SVR we can consider ourselves cured so to speak.
has anyone relapsed after 6 months? Or heard of anyone?
It just seems so sad to me that we are seeing so many relapses.  I hear that its around 50% that are cured... so I shouldn't be so discouraged.  It's all so sad to me!  
My husband is making lots of plans for career changes after his treatment.  It's all a little scary as I know the odds/percentages.  
Janet

[alagirl]

true that, I hadn't even factored in the nasal sprays with the rest of it.  Prob a good many people (including me) forget that those are actually a steroidal application.

[alagirl]

true that, I hadn't even factored in the nasal sprays with the rest of it.  Prob a good many people (including me) forget that those are actually a steroidal application.

[jmjm530]

Topical steroids and topical steroid nasal sprays (such as Nasonex) are commonly prescribed on treatment. Quite dfifferent from oral or injectable steroids, or so my doctor suggested. If prescribed for a condition, would not worry, but of course run things by your doctor. I do not believe Ben Gay and other icy hot products contain steroids, but could be wrong.

-- Jim

[alagirl]

I think it would depend on how much you used, but I kind of doubt it (I was thinking about that student track star who overdosed and died last year after using so much of one of those ben gay or icy hot type gels or creams over a long period of time.  I guess its pretty rare, but she was also really slathering huge amounts of the stuff on her muscles pretty continuously).  I don't know that there'd be enough, especially in a non prescription tube of hydrocortisone, to make a difference.

One study said that up to 5mg per day orally of corticosteroid was safe for those on treatment who had RA.

[geterdone]

Not of a liver transplant nature BUT, how many people on treatment use a steroid to combat the Riba Rash and does these steroid creams have any impact on the virus? We use these creams in low doses in conjunction with interferon and ribivirin over the same long period of TX or are these creams so minute to where they have no effect one way or the other.

jasper

[alagirl]

the latest research (published in 2007 I think?) to help answer why there appears to be more viral replication post transplant in those on steroids, and being given steroid boluses - and Mremeet, there were apparently documented numbers that promptes this concern - but at any rate, this latest study found that it seems the steroids themselves do not actually help or cause HCV to replicate.  In fact, they help (just slightly though) in retarding replication.

The reason so many patients post transplant who've used the steroids seem to become infected again so quickly, according to this study, appears to be that the steroids suppress the body's natural immune system's ability to fight the HCV.

To me, this means that you would have to extrapolate that information out to your particular situation I think, and where you are in treatment, in order to decide what impact steroid use might have for you personally.  And by you, I mean "any given person."  It is a question with which I am currently struggling myself.