treatment?

[sober193]

I was diagnosed last year and have been procrastinating treatment. I finally make up my mind to do it and
i am speaking to a guy who says something about a new treatment that will cut the time in half and is to be more successful. He also said since i have never tried any treatment that my chances could be better. I have not spoken with my Dr. about this hoping to have a little more info first. I am Type 1A  Grade 1 Stage ! with a Viral load of 10 Million  not sure what all this means but I am sure someone can help me. Its a New Year and time to take care of this. thanks....

[R Glass]

Ditto- WriteItDown/mkb13

[mkp13]

I also advocate the newer treatments.  You can only get them now in clinical trials, but they should be available to everybody in a year or two.  I think Boceprevir still requires 48 weeks of treatment.  Telaprevir seems to work fine with a 24-week course (you only take Telaprevir for the first 12.  Both are used in combination with Interferon and Ribavirin.  As far as I can tell, either is likely to offer a cure rate in the range of 75%-85%.  Just the Interferon/Ribavirin treatment is closer to 50%.  I just couldn't see doing a year with nasty side-effects for a 50% cure rate when something else was available.  Part of what influenced me was the risk of permanent side-effects, which you can hear more about elsewhere on this forum.  My reading in the medical literature suggested that the longer you take interferon the higher the likelihood of long-term or permanent problems.  Accordingly, I wanted to minimize the span of time during which I was taking interferon.

Bottom line: My initial stats were almost exactly like yours.  I did six months of treatment with Interferon/Ribavirin with Telaprevir for the first 12 weeks.  The side effects with Telaprevir are a bit worse, but the duration is halved.  For me, that was the right tradeoff.  I'm now one year post-treatment, I have no detectable viral load and I feel fine.  I'm back to dancing, hiking, biking, skiing and generally enjoying life.

Best wishes and good luck making a decision.

[WriteItDown]

Hi,

Yes, you heard right.  There are new drugs which will likely be approved in 2011, that may well shorten treatment from 48 weeks to 24 weeks.  They are called protease inhibitors, the brand names are Telaprevir and Boceprevir, and they are used in combination with current Standard of Care (pegylated interferon and ribavirin).

Since you are only a Stage 1, if I were you I would wait for the new treatment to be approved. You will have a better chance of clearing the virus with the new treatment, and you might get to cut your treatment time in half, which is a great thing, since the drugs can be quite hard to take.

I advise you to speak to your doctor about all the possibilities.  I hope you have a hepatologist (liver specialist) and not just a GI doc.  You should try to find someone who is very experienced with treating Hep C patients, they will be much better for you than someone who isn't.

This forum is a great way to get information: there are a lot of people on here who have treated with the old drugs and with the new, so ask questions!

Best of luck to you and happy new year!

[chemister]

Your viral load is high, but yours liver enzymes: ALAT and ASAT indicate how much your liver work with the virus. Your first 4 weeks of the treatment indicate a lot. I had high virus start load, but rapid clear (about 14 days), and will be treated for only 24 weeks and I don’t need any of the new drugs with tripped drugs treatment.
Hep C is a chronic disease and will harm your liver over time.

First time a feel illness of hep C was after 25-30 years and my liver was Fri from fibrosis (grade 1) which I think is positive for the treatment result. I would start the treatment for 10 years ago, if I knew more about hep C then.