Hi, rohcvfighter!
"cure" implies that the virus is gone and the liver returns to the normal status (no fibrosis).
Yes, often "cure" implies that the virus is gone completely. But normal status of liver is "no cirrhosis". Liver fibrosis itself is not a disease, and many healthy people have liver fibrosis without history of having hepatitis virus. Really, we cannot be completely sure that "virus is gone completely", because we cannot exclude possibility of "occult" hepatitis, which is not detected by current conventional PCR blood test.
No matter whether we talk about SVR or cure or whether some small HCV RNAs exists somewhere in small quantities, as long as there will be no more "destruction force" against the liver, I can live very fine with SVR12/SVR24,SVR48
"Occult" hepatitis due to small quantities of HCV RNAs is not well-studied - hence, we cannot be completely sure that such possible kind of hepatitis is not a "destructive force"... Also, damaging of liver, caused by HCV, does not depends on viral load. We may have low viral load (for example, 200 copies per ml) and fast fibrosis progression, or we may have 10 millions per ml and no fibrosis progression during many years. Hence, if we will have, for example, 0.5 copies per ml after SVR, which are not detected by current conventional PCR test - we cannot 100% confidently predict possibility/rate of fibrosis progression. In anyway, SVR looks like a good prognostic sign and i wish you to achieve SVR with your therapy!
Probably infected in 1977
2005 - diagnosed with HCV 1b, compensated F4, 15 mln viral load, ALT 320
2005-2006 - PegIFN/rib 48 weeks treatment, relapse
2016 - compensated F4, MELD 8-9, ALT 100-160
2018 - compensated F4, MELD 8, ALT 91