teleprivir and waiting????

[jt57]

Had my biopsy yesterday.  The Dr. said that my tissue "looked good" and he wanted me to think about "waiting" for treatment.  He is doing a teleprivir  trial starting this summer for 1b patients that have never had any previous treatment. We were going to start immediately on the current SOC.  I'll get my actual results on Wednesday, so I will actually have more to go on then.

What do you guys think?  Is the teleprivir an injection, or a pill?  How about side effects?  

I am hoping that the doc stating my tissue looked good is indicative of a good report!!!!  

Appreciate all the support out there!  I was really scared about the biopsy, but this forum convinced me I needed to do it.  You guys are a great support system.. I'll do my best to contribute what I can to the forum as well!!

Jean

[blonde333]

No I have not tried yet, my doctors office called and asked me if i wanted to participate in a phase 3 trial with schering and plough. So are you saying that it isnt the trial drug that is making you mutate or become resistent it is the SOC. I am geno 1 last biopsy showed 0 scaring and 1 inflamation. Another concern i have is I am very skinny could that make the sx worse? Thanks for your reply.

[nygirl7]

Mutating, resistance - all these things are of great concern to heppers.  The first time you do treatment you have the very best chance of clearing because of these things. The second time it gets a bit harder and you have to increase dosages - go longer...to make sure you get all those suckers and then to train your body to fight them off for good.

Take it from me, we've seen a lot of GREAT people who did not succeed with treatment the first time but that did succeed on the second so it shouldn't scare you.  

I'm not an expert in this field though - instead of stopping at week 48 I continued on to extend to 72 weeks because I didn't want to try again later and that worked for me.

Have you treated already?

[blonde333]

when you say this

"If you should fail and need to treat again it would be a disadvantage as you could developed a resistance and it would be harder."

What do you mean. resistance to the drug in trial or SOC. I read this and this is a concern for me I just cant find any articales that talk about it. I also heard something about mutating????
Any input would be appriciated

[nygirl7]

Yes there are so many variables - you really need to find out your grade and stage before thinking too hard because there are just so many different options.

Of course some of us decided we would treat no matter what the biopsy outcome anyway - and others like Jim would not treat until at least stage 3. To me that's cutting it too close (although I was a 3 I had decided I would treat and kill it off regardless before I found out)...but as you see it all depends on what you think and your own information.

If you can wait and have very little damage - you might want to see where tele ends up and not take the risk of a trial.

[jmjm530]

Telaprevir is not a little magic pill that "poof" makes Hepatitis C go away. You take it along with a weekly injection of peg interferon and ribavirin. You can therefore expect the same side effects if not more. Yes, it's showing itself to be a better alternative than conventional treatment (better results in half the time) BUT if your doctor is telling you that you have time to wait because of little liver damage, then I would take his advice seriously. The advantage to waiting is that things will only get better in the future in terms of treatment alternatives and you won't have to go into a trial where you may get a placebo drug, meaning you may not get Telaprevir at all.

-- Jim

[Trinity4]

Andiamo said treatment in a trial with teleprevir was for a total of 24 wks?  I thought the total tx time was 48 wks?