viral count

[daniel777]

i had hepatitus in 1970.  i was tested in 2006 ,and was told, at that time(2006), i have hepatitus c and my viral count was below 75.  my question is why is the viral count that low?  does this mean i am cured? why do others with hepatitus c have viral counts that are in the millions when mine is so low? are there healh risks i should know about? can i donate plasma or blood?  

[vincenos]

im gonna take a swing at this but others here probably explain better : 1st no you cant donate blood if you have  hep c 2nd. the way i understand it is that the viral loadgoes up and down all the time ,idont know if the higher the worst you feel  ,i dont knoww but  if you have any viral load #s at all soley means you for sure have the  hep c  thats my best shot   there are others here much more educated on this good luck and god bless

[nygirl7]

If you haven't been tested since 2006 you need to be retested - you either are one of the people that could have cleared the disease spontaneously or it could have gone up drastically since then.

Right now if you are still as 75 - you have Hepc - I doubt it would be that low still but..........it could have been a false positive, you just won't know until you get the test again now.

Good luck.

[FlGuy]

The sensitivity of the tests, or the ability of the test to reveal low number vary from test to test.  Since you say that the test said that "viral count was below 75" probably means that the particular test could not find any virus and that the test was good down to 75 copies, or units per milliliter of blood .  To be safe, you should test again sometime.  If again the results say that you have less than 75 or 50 or whatever the limits of detection are for the test, you should feel pretty good that you do not have an active chronic infection.   Some available tests are so sensitive that they can reveal counts as low as 2.