Please help my son is two years old diagnosed today with hep C viral load 69,000,000 he is two years old and of course I am so worried about my baby I need to know he will be ok we see all the specialists and they don't know what to tell me as they have never had a child in his position before I need to know my baby will be ok
This thread is almost 3 years old...you may get a better response of you start a new thread with the same question.
In terms of your question, "do i need to start treatment" based on your viral load...Id say there are more important factors to consider than that...like how long have you had HCV, what does your liver look like (fibrosis), your genotype...etc. Personally, Im pro-treatment...I feel like if you have HCV you should treat as long as your healthy enough. Some will tell you to wait for these new meds that are supposed to be coming out...everybody has there own opinion.
Viral Load
This is the amount of virus in your blood. If you have lower levels of virus in your blood when you start treatment, you may have a better chance of getting rid of the virus. Having a high viral load does not mean you have worse liver damage but it is harder to get rid of the virus with treatment.
http://www.hepatitis.va.gov/patient/treat/decisions-single-page.asp
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Like I said, post a new thread and you mat get a better response.
I have a Viral Load of 30 IU/mL. do i need to start treatment?
viral load can fluctuate as much as a log one way or another. So a viral load of 1.7 million can go up to 17 million or down to .17 million easily. That is why when you are on treatment, they look for a 2 log drop my week 12...anything else may not reflect effects of the meds. So nothing to really worry about.
Also, viral load has no effect of severity of damage or symptoms.
Good luck...
Viral load can fluctuate enormously as yours has. It doesn't correlate with the severity of your disease or the damage that is being done to your liver. It is really only relevant when determining how you are responding to treatment.
My viral load was 2.65 million when I started tx, several months before it was closer to 6 million, and it has been up to 15 million at times.
I have seen people go undetectable from treatment that had much higher viral loads then you and some of them went undetectable very quickly. Although having a lower viral load may be give you a better chance of clearing the virus during treatment, often it seems to be about how resistant a particular persons virus is to the drugs, not the quantity of the virus.
Liver enzymes are often normal or close to it unless you are in the acute phase of HCV (first 6 months of being infected), or if you have more advanced disease. It's different for everyone though.
Take Care - Dave