Aa
Warning about Nutrasal's Phoschol
Hi, friends and others [grin] in the Medhelp hep C forum! I haven't been posting to the forum for a long time due to health issues [joke].
All kidding aside, I felt obliged to report to the forum some negative info about Nutrasal's product Phoschol, a PPC - polyenylphosphatidylcholine - that I have been taking for a few years and which I recommended here as one of a number of antioxidants and nutrients that have helped to keep my hepatic enzymes down.
Trouble with Phoschol capsules leaking and admitting air started a year ago and has unfortunately continued, despite Nutrasal's assurances to me that they had resolved the problem. They haven't. The gelatin capsules they use harden and crack along a seam, resulting in the PPC leaking out and air bubbles leaking in. This is obviously dangerous, particularly from the standpoint of oxidation (rancidity), a big bugaboo with PPC and other unsaturated fatty acids and their extracts, as the oxidized form of them can have opposite physiological effects from those desired.
I won't go into all the email back and forth with Nutrasal on the subject. Suffice it to say that they, or rather Betterlife, one of their distributors, sent me leaky capsules in January and again in September, and the replacement Phoschol that Nutrasal sent me just last week is still encapsulated in the very same hard gelatin caps, which they ludicrously advertise as "softgels". The recently-received gelatin caps will no doubt continue hardening, just as all the previous ones did, and begin to leak way before the expiration date and before I can get back to the States and look for another brand of PPC.
The bottom line is that I repent of ever having boosted Phoschol here in the forum. I sincerely hope that no one else has taken leaky Phoschol capsules. And I must warn against them, because Nutrasal has not changed the bad gelatin caps and is still shipping them.
That said, my belief in PPC as a good thing to take for hep C-caused liver fibrosis remains intact. Since taking PPC together with vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid, and silimarin, my liver enzymes have gone down from around 100 to around 40, or normal, and have stayed there.
Others, including the legendary Gauf, took another PPC product named Hepatapro, and I will be ordering some of that as soon as I can. It remains to be seen whether Hepatapro has found a better encapsulation solution for their PPC. If it turns out that they have, I will report it to the forum.
Cheers to all!
Mike
All kidding aside, I felt obliged to report to the forum some negative info about Nutrasal's product Phoschol, a PPC - polyenylphosphatidylcholine - that I have been taking for a few years and which I recommended here as one of a number of antioxidants and nutrients that have helped to keep my hepatic enzymes down.
Trouble with Phoschol capsules leaking and admitting air started a year ago and has unfortunately continued, despite Nutrasal's assurances to me that they had resolved the problem. They haven't. The gelatin capsules they use harden and crack along a seam, resulting in the PPC leaking out and air bubbles leaking in. This is obviously dangerous, particularly from the standpoint of oxidation (rancidity), a big bugaboo with PPC and other unsaturated fatty acids and their extracts, as the oxidized form of them can have opposite physiological effects from those desired.
I won't go into all the email back and forth with Nutrasal on the subject. Suffice it to say that they, or rather Betterlife, one of their distributors, sent me leaky capsules in January and again in September, and the replacement Phoschol that Nutrasal sent me just last week is still encapsulated in the very same hard gelatin caps, which they ludicrously advertise as "softgels". The recently-received gelatin caps will no doubt continue hardening, just as all the previous ones did, and begin to leak way before the expiration date and before I can get back to the States and look for another brand of PPC.
The bottom line is that I repent of ever having boosted Phoschol here in the forum. I sincerely hope that no one else has taken leaky Phoschol capsules. And I must warn against them, because Nutrasal has not changed the bad gelatin caps and is still shipping them.
That said, my belief in PPC as a good thing to take for hep C-caused liver fibrosis remains intact. Since taking PPC together with vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid, and silimarin, my liver enzymes have gone down from around 100 to around 40, or normal, and have stayed there.
Others, including the legendary Gauf, took another PPC product named Hepatapro, and I will be ordering some of that as soon as I can. It remains to be seen whether Hepatapro has found a better encapsulation solution for their PPC. If it turns out that they have, I will report it to the forum.
Cheers to all!
Mike
Whether or not, or to what extent, PPC is efficacious in treating fibrosis or assisting in the treatment of HCV itself, cannot be stated definitively. Theoretical grounds suggest that it ought to help: my attitude was--and still is--that it's not likely to hurt, and there's a decent possibility that it might help. In my case, I continued using it long after my HCV 2005 treatment, and, yes, my doctors knew about it. Recent ultrasounds have found no detectable fibrosis, in contrast to radiography in 2005, but, obviously, I cannot attribute that to any one thing.
I would certainly agree that it would be literally insane to forego standard medical treatment for HCV: it works, and I'm living proof of it. At the same time, think about fighting the disease as fighting a war. Don't limit yourself to just the air force when you also have a navy. In this case, I'm not sure that it's fair to use the analogy of, say, PPC and silymarin as the "navy" compared with the "air force" of standard medicine, but if you can get even a 1% extra advantage, then take it.
One could cherry pick and decide that PPC is nothing but a placebo, or one could decide that it's the cure for all diseases known to man. Eventually, someone will reconcile apparently contradictory data. One problem, for instance, is that a study showing that those who took PPC were helped might have been measuring, not the PPC per se, but the effect from the participants simultaneously taking other substances that were made much more bio-available by the PPC. Yes, it does that, and, yes, people do that: they don't tell their doctors because they "know" that the doctors won't approve.
Remember, a decade or so ago, no fancy bioavailable formulations of silymarin, such as Siliphos®, were available. Some of those taking PPC had to have been also taking an ~unbioavailable silymarin (or a similar substance)--a confounder that would increase the apparent effectiveness of PPC. I'm aware that silymarin is just as controversial as PPC in some minds: if you are looking for efficacy beyond a reasonable doubt, you'll have to wait a few decades. I'm a big fan of Indena and its Siliphos, however. The people who run Indena are not idiots, and we're not talking about nutjobs such as at a certain "natural" so-called "news" site.
I'm not impressed by in vivo studies that do not measure the actual absorption of the substance being tested. Some study a decade or two ago that found no effect say, from silymarin, doesn't necessarily mean anything without knowing whether the silymarin was actually absorbed. Its poor solubility is now well-known. I am also underimpressed by the VA PPC findings as they might or might not apply to someone who doesn't drink. Alcohol users are already messing themselves up so much that only a brain transplant would help, not PPC. What hope could there possibly be for those who drink when they suffer from a severe liver problem?
The number of discrete chemical substances that have been studied for their effect on the progression of various liver diseases and even prevention of adverse liver response to chemical insult is phenomenal. When researchers decide to see whether substances such as oleuropein, ECGC, resveratrol, pycnogenol, black tea extract, grape seed extract, berberine, bilberry, daidzein, flavangenol, rosmarinic acid, branched-chain amino acids, taurine, or any of dozens of other substances that have been looked at, have any effect on the etiology, say, of alcoholic steatosis or steatohepatitis, I don't think that they're merrily opening up a chemical cabinet and pulling out bottles at random just to see if something will happen if they administer the substance. There is usually some kind of rationale underlying what apparently, to some, appears to be madness.
You might find Karl Gundermann's review of PPC relevant. He is a consultant for Sanofi-Aventis, but I have more faith in "BigPharma" than most people, considering that I owe my life several times over, both to the medical profession and to "BigPharma." http://www.if-pan.krakow.pl/pjp/pdf/2011/3_643.pdf (2011) (See https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl_Josef_Gundermann/publications.) One take-away would be that PPC seems to be have been somewhat of a "bandwagon" for him at one time, which means that one should be extra cautious in evaluating what he says.
Since some might interpret what I just wrote as promoting the use of silymarin, let me issue a caution: if, as it seems to do, it inhibits angiogenesis, you really don't want to be taking it all the time, and, certainly, you wouldn't want to be taking it if you have any wounds that need healing. In addition, one needs to always consider its effect on cytochrome P450. I am an avid opponent of merrily gulping down megadoses of such supplements every ten minutes. Remember James Watson's warning about antioxidants: many people use them in the hope of preventing cancers, but he warns that they may end up causing more cancers than they prevent.
I've also had acid reflux for about 50 years due to a hiatal hernia. I can't be positive, but, over time, it seemed to me that I had less of a problem with I was taking the PPC more religiously, i.e., it seemed that I would have more of a reflux problem when I was using the PPC less, such as when the bottle was nearly empty. That's an issue that has multitudinous factors affecting it, so God only knows whether the PPC really did anything, but I looked it up, and found a patent for the use of PPC in wound healing. Taken in combination with what else we know about it, I'm speculating that it might help ameliorate the symptoms of gastric irritation.
I would certainly agree that it would be literally insane to forego standard medical treatment for HCV: it works, and I'm living proof of it. At the same time, think about fighting the disease as fighting a war. Don't limit yourself to just the air force when you also have a navy. In this case, I'm not sure that it's fair to use the analogy of, say, PPC and silymarin as the "navy" compared with the "air force" of standard medicine, but if you can get even a 1% extra advantage, then take it.
One could cherry pick and decide that PPC is nothing but a placebo, or one could decide that it's the cure for all diseases known to man. Eventually, someone will reconcile apparently contradictory data. One problem, for instance, is that a study showing that those who took PPC were helped might have been measuring, not the PPC per se, but the effect from the participants simultaneously taking other substances that were made much more bio-available by the PPC. Yes, it does that, and, yes, people do that: they don't tell their doctors because they "know" that the doctors won't approve.
Remember, a decade or so ago, no fancy bioavailable formulations of silymarin, such as Siliphos®, were available. Some of those taking PPC had to have been also taking an ~unbioavailable silymarin (or a similar substance)--a confounder that would increase the apparent effectiveness of PPC. I'm aware that silymarin is just as controversial as PPC in some minds: if you are looking for efficacy beyond a reasonable doubt, you'll have to wait a few decades. I'm a big fan of Indena and its Siliphos, however. The people who run Indena are not idiots, and we're not talking about nutjobs such as at a certain "natural" so-called "news" site.
I'm not impressed by in vivo studies that do not measure the actual absorption of the substance being tested. Some study a decade or two ago that found no effect say, from silymarin, doesn't necessarily mean anything without knowing whether the silymarin was actually absorbed. Its poor solubility is now well-known. I am also underimpressed by the VA PPC findings as they might or might not apply to someone who doesn't drink. Alcohol users are already messing themselves up so much that only a brain transplant would help, not PPC. What hope could there possibly be for those who drink when they suffer from a severe liver problem?
The number of discrete chemical substances that have been studied for their effect on the progression of various liver diseases and even prevention of adverse liver response to chemical insult is phenomenal. When researchers decide to see whether substances such as oleuropein, ECGC, resveratrol, pycnogenol, black tea extract, grape seed extract, berberine, bilberry, daidzein, flavangenol, rosmarinic acid, branched-chain amino acids, taurine, or any of dozens of other substances that have been looked at, have any effect on the etiology, say, of alcoholic steatosis or steatohepatitis, I don't think that they're merrily opening up a chemical cabinet and pulling out bottles at random just to see if something will happen if they administer the substance. There is usually some kind of rationale underlying what apparently, to some, appears to be madness.
You might find Karl Gundermann's review of PPC relevant. He is a consultant for Sanofi-Aventis, but I have more faith in "BigPharma" than most people, considering that I owe my life several times over, both to the medical profession and to "BigPharma." http://www.if-pan.krakow.pl/pjp/pdf/2011/3_643.pdf (2011) (See https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl_Josef_Gundermann/publications.) One take-away would be that PPC seems to be have been somewhat of a "bandwagon" for him at one time, which means that one should be extra cautious in evaluating what he says.
Since some might interpret what I just wrote as promoting the use of silymarin, let me issue a caution: if, as it seems to do, it inhibits angiogenesis, you really don't want to be taking it all the time, and, certainly, you wouldn't want to be taking it if you have any wounds that need healing. In addition, one needs to always consider its effect on cytochrome P450. I am an avid opponent of merrily gulping down megadoses of such supplements every ten minutes. Remember James Watson's warning about antioxidants: many people use them in the hope of preventing cancers, but he warns that they may end up causing more cancers than they prevent.
I've also had acid reflux for about 50 years due to a hiatal hernia. I can't be positive, but, over time, it seemed to me that I had less of a problem with I was taking the PPC more religiously, i.e., it seemed that I would have more of a reflux problem when I was using the PPC less, such as when the bottle was nearly empty. That's an issue that has multitudinous factors affecting it, so God only knows whether the PPC really did anything, but I looked it up, and found a patent for the use of PPC in wound healing. Taken in combination with what else we know about it, I'm speculating that it might help ameliorate the symptoms of gastric irritation.
I was diagnosed with an unknown form of hepatitis in 1963, as a high school senior: it was "serum hepatitis." Diagnostic tests did not match it exactly to known viruses, puzzling my doctors. I was warned not to ever drink or do anything to endanger my liver. That was long before HCV was identified as a discrete entity. In 1996, I was diagnosed with HCV as a result of an alert physician who mandated a blood test before he would prescribe griseofulvin. I assume that the 1996 diagnosis was not of a new entity, but merely an unequivocal ID of the 1963 disease. I lived with it until 2005, when I took a 48-week Pegasys®/ribavarin course. That cleared the infection. Several blood tests since have not detected any viral load, so I was one of the lucky ones.
When I discovered LEF's HepatoPro®, I started taking that. Then, in May, 2006, I started buying PhosChol®, getting gelatin caps at first. Both brands did have some leaky capsules, but the amount of leakage was not great, judging by the amount of liquid that ended up in the container. It was messy, though, and I eventually started buying the pint bottles of pure PhosChol, which is messy in a different way. The bottle top gets messy, and the dosage is not as precise, but exact dosage is not a big deal.
From an email I sent Nutrasal, Oct. 2, 2011: "I have had a problem for years with the Hepatopro from the LEF, as well as with your capsules, with some of the product seeming to leak out, and with the bottles always seeming to have had at least one opened capsule from the get go. For instance...when I finished the [last] bottle, I was able to scrape maybe a third of a teaspoon of PPC off the bottom. The bottle I just got...for the first time EVER...[had] no sticky capsules, at least on top. I'm not going to pour all of them out just to look, but I'm wondering if you have changed the formulation of the capsule itself."
It turns out that they did have to change the gelatin formulation itself due to changing USP requirements for gelatin capsules. As you might suspect, the more impervious they make it, the harder it is to meet the USP requirements. You have to consider the nature of what they're encapsulating: the stuff will dissolve anything. (Well, almost.) So they're between a rock and a hard place. If they make it easy to dissolve, it'll leak, but if they make it too hard, it won't pass the test. With PPC, it's a thorny problem indeed.
Check this out for how gelatin capsules are formulated: https://old.uqu.edu.sa/files2/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/4290121/CAPSULES.pdf.
Check out the USP's requirements for dissolution and rupture: http://www.usp.org/sites/default/files/usp_pdf/EN/USPNF/revisions/2040disintegrationanddissolution.pdf.
PPC is expensive. The best price on it is at the moment seems to be the pint bottles via BetterLife. Right now, the price is $149.95 for a full pint, one of which I just ordered. I found your forum here accidentally the other day because I couldn't find nutrasal.com: I'd forgotten whom I'd bought it from, and my search found your post.
If you buy the pure liquid, you don't have to worry about issues with gelatin capsules. It's cheaper that way anyway. Yes, I was also unhappy about the capsules long ago, but I suspected that the culprit, or one of the main culprits, was probably the method of transportation. Imagine your capsules sitting in some UPS or FedEx truck in the hot sun for hours: that's probably not good for the integrity of the product. Yes, once it's in a capsule, it's reasonably safe from oxidation, but I'm not really going to worry about such a thick liquid getting oxidized while it's sitting in a bottle.
If they do run a special on capsules again, if the price is equal to or better than the price of the liquid, I might try the capsules again. However, there's one advantage of the liquid: I add a spoonful to certain sauces and gravies, which is a huge hassle to do using capsules.
When I discovered LEF's HepatoPro®, I started taking that. Then, in May, 2006, I started buying PhosChol®, getting gelatin caps at first. Both brands did have some leaky capsules, but the amount of leakage was not great, judging by the amount of liquid that ended up in the container. It was messy, though, and I eventually started buying the pint bottles of pure PhosChol, which is messy in a different way. The bottle top gets messy, and the dosage is not as precise, but exact dosage is not a big deal.
From an email I sent Nutrasal, Oct. 2, 2011: "I have had a problem for years with the Hepatopro from the LEF, as well as with your capsules, with some of the product seeming to leak out, and with the bottles always seeming to have had at least one opened capsule from the get go. For instance...when I finished the [last] bottle, I was able to scrape maybe a third of a teaspoon of PPC off the bottom. The bottle I just got...for the first time EVER...[had] no sticky capsules, at least on top. I'm not going to pour all of them out just to look, but I'm wondering if you have changed the formulation of the capsule itself."
It turns out that they did have to change the gelatin formulation itself due to changing USP requirements for gelatin capsules. As you might suspect, the more impervious they make it, the harder it is to meet the USP requirements. You have to consider the nature of what they're encapsulating: the stuff will dissolve anything. (Well, almost.) So they're between a rock and a hard place. If they make it easy to dissolve, it'll leak, but if they make it too hard, it won't pass the test. With PPC, it's a thorny problem indeed.
Check this out for how gelatin capsules are formulated: https://old.uqu.edu.sa/files2/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/4290121/CAPSULES.pdf.
Check out the USP's requirements for dissolution and rupture: http://www.usp.org/sites/default/files/usp_pdf/EN/USPNF/revisions/2040disintegrationanddissolution.pdf.
PPC is expensive. The best price on it is at the moment seems to be the pint bottles via BetterLife. Right now, the price is $149.95 for a full pint, one of which I just ordered. I found your forum here accidentally the other day because I couldn't find nutrasal.com: I'd forgotten whom I'd bought it from, and my search found your post.
If you buy the pure liquid, you don't have to worry about issues with gelatin capsules. It's cheaper that way anyway. Yes, I was also unhappy about the capsules long ago, but I suspected that the culprit, or one of the main culprits, was probably the method of transportation. Imagine your capsules sitting in some UPS or FedEx truck in the hot sun for hours: that's probably not good for the integrity of the product. Yes, once it's in a capsule, it's reasonably safe from oxidation, but I'm not really going to worry about such a thick liquid getting oxidized while it's sitting in a bottle.
If they do run a special on capsules again, if the price is equal to or better than the price of the liquid, I might try the capsules again. However, there's one advantage of the liquid: I add a spoonful to certain sauces and gravies, which is a huge hassle to do using capsules.
I'm not promoting anything.
That said, there are just as many articles showing that PPC and antioxidants do help to slow fibrosis progression as there are, like the one you posted, saying they don't.
All I know is that since taking them my hepatogram has improved. Sure, maybe something altogether else did it, and the supps were just coincident. I'm gonna keep on taking them, though, if that's okay with you.
Mike
That said, there are just as many articles showing that PPC and antioxidants do help to slow fibrosis progression as there are, like the one you posted, saying they don't.
All I know is that since taking them my hepatogram has improved. Sure, maybe something altogether else did it, and the supps were just coincident. I'm gonna keep on taking them, though, if that's okay with you.
Mike
I haven't suggested taking supplements instead of Tx, and I didn't say that supplements lower viral load.
Mike
Mike
Mike,
It is still a mystery to me as to why yourself and others are still promoting anything other than standard treatment to manage or cure hepatitis C? Is it because of your belief that the pharma companies are all evil and all of their products are a trick to fool the public and steal their money? That the marketing of antivirals is a conspiracy to dupe persons with hepatitis C?
When genotype 1 patients had less than a 50% cure rate I could understand be being desperate for alternatives that might help to give you a better then 50/50 chance of cure. But we are now in a whole new world of treatment with the addition of antivirals. While we are only at the very beginning of this new approach to treatment, current treatments for the genotypes that are most common in the US now have cure rates up to about 80%.
I also question why you would promote the use of polyenylphosphatidylcholine which has shown to be ineffective in slowing or stopping the progression of liver fibrosis for over ten years now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'II. Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study of polyenylphosphatidylcholine in alcoholic liver disease.
Lieber CS, Weiss DG, Groszmann R, Paronetto F, Schenker S; Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study 391 Group.
Source
Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York 10468, USA. ***@****
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Polyenylphosphatidylcholine (PPC) has been shown to prevent alcoholic cirrhosis in animals. Our aims were to determine the effectiveness of PPC in preventing or reversing liver fibrosis in heavy drinkers and to assess the extent of liver injury associated with the reduced drinking achieved in these patients.
METHODS:
This randomized, prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted in 20 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers with 789 patients (97% male; mean age, 48.8 years) averaging 16 drinks per day (1 drink = 14 g of alcohol) for 19 years. A baseline liver biopsy confirmed the presence of perivenular or septal fibrosis or incomplete cirrhosis. They were randomly assigned either PPC or placebo. Liver biopsy was repeated at 24 months, and the main outcome measure was the stage of fibrosis compared with baseline. Progression was defined as advancing to a more severe stage.
RESULTS:
The 2-year biopsy was completed in 412 patients. PPC did not differ significantly from placebo in its effect on the main outcome. Alcohol intake was unexpectedly reduced in both groups to approximately 2.5 drinks per day. With this intake, 21.4% advanced at least one stage (22.8% of PPC patients and 20.0% of placebo patients). The hepatitis C virus-positive subgroup exhibited accelerated progression. Improvement in transaminases and bilirubin favoring PPC was seen at some time points in other subgroups (hepatitis C virus-positive drinkers or heavy drinkers).
CONCLUSIONS:
PPC treatment for 2 years did not affect progression of liver fibrosis. A trend in favor of PPC was seen for transaminases and bilirubin (in subgroups). One of five patients progressed even at moderate levels of drinking, and thus health benefits commonly associated with moderate drinking do not necessarily extend to individuals in the early stages of alcoholic liver disease.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silymarin which you also mention, also has been shown to have no effect (ggog or ill) on patients with hepatitis C and liver disease. 'AASLD: Milk Thistle No Help in Chronic HCV'
'my liver enzymes have gone down from around 100 to around 40'
As though there is any relationship between liver enzymes and the progression of liver disease. There isn't. This binary simple thinking, high=bad and low= good, shows a lack of understanding of the basics of liver disease. Is it good or bad that a person with acute hepatitis has liver enzymes 1,000 or above while a person with End-Stage Liver Disease only has enzymes less than 2x norms? Which is better?
The same is true for viral load. Viral load does not correspond to the progression of liver disease either.
So why promote the use of substances that has shown to have no benefit for persons infected with hepatitis C and have developed liver disease? When treatment has shown that it can cure up to 80% of patients and new medicines that are at least as affective are now being used in clinical trials?
Cheers!
Hector
It is still a mystery to me as to why yourself and others are still promoting anything other than standard treatment to manage or cure hepatitis C? Is it because of your belief that the pharma companies are all evil and all of their products are a trick to fool the public and steal their money? That the marketing of antivirals is a conspiracy to dupe persons with hepatitis C?
When genotype 1 patients had less than a 50% cure rate I could understand be being desperate for alternatives that might help to give you a better then 50/50 chance of cure. But we are now in a whole new world of treatment with the addition of antivirals. While we are only at the very beginning of this new approach to treatment, current treatments for the genotypes that are most common in the US now have cure rates up to about 80%.
I also question why you would promote the use of polyenylphosphatidylcholine which has shown to be ineffective in slowing or stopping the progression of liver fibrosis for over ten years now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'II. Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study of polyenylphosphatidylcholine in alcoholic liver disease.
Lieber CS, Weiss DG, Groszmann R, Paronetto F, Schenker S; Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study 391 Group.
Source
Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York 10468, USA. ***@****
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Polyenylphosphatidylcholine (PPC) has been shown to prevent alcoholic cirrhosis in animals. Our aims were to determine the effectiveness of PPC in preventing or reversing liver fibrosis in heavy drinkers and to assess the extent of liver injury associated with the reduced drinking achieved in these patients.
METHODS:
This randomized, prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted in 20 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers with 789 patients (97% male; mean age, 48.8 years) averaging 16 drinks per day (1 drink = 14 g of alcohol) for 19 years. A baseline liver biopsy confirmed the presence of perivenular or septal fibrosis or incomplete cirrhosis. They were randomly assigned either PPC or placebo. Liver biopsy was repeated at 24 months, and the main outcome measure was the stage of fibrosis compared with baseline. Progression was defined as advancing to a more severe stage.
RESULTS:
The 2-year biopsy was completed in 412 patients. PPC did not differ significantly from placebo in its effect on the main outcome. Alcohol intake was unexpectedly reduced in both groups to approximately 2.5 drinks per day. With this intake, 21.4% advanced at least one stage (22.8% of PPC patients and 20.0% of placebo patients). The hepatitis C virus-positive subgroup exhibited accelerated progression. Improvement in transaminases and bilirubin favoring PPC was seen at some time points in other subgroups (hepatitis C virus-positive drinkers or heavy drinkers).
CONCLUSIONS:
PPC treatment for 2 years did not affect progression of liver fibrosis. A trend in favor of PPC was seen for transaminases and bilirubin (in subgroups). One of five patients progressed even at moderate levels of drinking, and thus health benefits commonly associated with moderate drinking do not necessarily extend to individuals in the early stages of alcoholic liver disease.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silymarin which you also mention, also has been shown to have no effect (ggog or ill) on patients with hepatitis C and liver disease. 'AASLD: Milk Thistle No Help in Chronic HCV'
'my liver enzymes have gone down from around 100 to around 40'
As though there is any relationship between liver enzymes and the progression of liver disease. There isn't. This binary simple thinking, high=bad and low= good, shows a lack of understanding of the basics of liver disease. Is it good or bad that a person with acute hepatitis has liver enzymes 1,000 or above while a person with End-Stage Liver Disease only has enzymes less than 2x norms? Which is better?
The same is true for viral load. Viral load does not correspond to the progression of liver disease either.
So why promote the use of substances that has shown to have no benefit for persons infected with hepatitis C and have developed liver disease? When treatment has shown that it can cure up to 80% of patients and new medicines that are at least as affective are now being used in clinical trials?
Cheers!
Hector
Interesting. Supplements instead of HepC tx? I mean is the belief that your viral load is lowered or halted completely then the damage from HepC stops? Hope I said that right, I know there is a drug being tested right now that lowers or halts viral load but it's only in clinical trial for AIDS patients. Hopefully someone else on this forum takes the supplements your talking about so they can be aware of the faulty gelcaps. Hey Mike, if you know of any links that talk about lowering your viral load because it stops the progression of your HepC I would really be interested in seeing them. Arato!
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