TOPIC: RNA came back positive and going to GP in 2 days

Received my Visa card today and ordered the Harvoni generic for 12 weeks. Not the wait for it begins . If the 12 weeks needs an extension would it be better to take a broader based generic such as Epclusa for the second 12 weeks ? I have be diagnosed with GT 1a but several types can coexist with the dominant GT showing up on the RNA so I am not sure that attacking the known dominant type without ruling out all others is such a good idea.

Sof/Dac is as good as Sof/Vel and more reliably absorbed.

While there is nothing really wrong with doing a bit extra for insurance you are looking at a baseline 95-96% cure rate with 12 weeks.

If you are undetected at 4 weeks after starting the tablets then you are on track and should probably just sit tight.

If mentally it's going to bug you severely then it's not completely insane to do a bit longer, either with the same medication, or a pangenotypic like Sof/Dac or Sof/Vel.

You prescribed Sofosbuvir + Ledipasvir not the other two though. The Harvoni generic is just as effective as the other two for GT 1a ?

Harvoni has the best track record of any drug in GT1 with multiple sources of independent validation.

Sof/Vel is new and there are absorption issues around the velpatasvir in some patients. Because it's new, most of the data is company data and the Harvoni data (from the company) was a little on the optimistic side.

We have used quite a lot of Sof/Dac in GT1 and I am aware of a large independent study about to be published about it, but because of the originator price being north of $100k there is less in the public domain.

Any of these are good, and the number of failures so small it's hard to pick a clear winner.

Hi Sharmon
I was once HCV Positive gen 1a
My Sof/led from FHC cured me
My signature here has the timeline and stats. Harvoni Sof/led is a miracle.
Wishing you well for tx
Happy Splashes
Ariel

The shipment was cleared by US customs in Cincinnati and is now with Canada customs since this morning.

Update : Cleared Canada Customs and a duty of 56.93$ CAD was charged and paid online. Clearance time from arrival in Canada , 44 minutes

Out for delivery , I can't believe that shipping from India to Canada took almost 2 whole days , I thought it would never arrive lol.

We say 2 weeks because it can take that long, and sometimes longer. 2 days does sometimes happen.... Clearly the stars are coming into alignment for you.

I just found out that I have a viral load of almost 4 million......I haven’t spoken to my doctor yet, just saw lab results and my mind is spinning.....is 4 million really bad?

No.
Mine was 3 times that.

Can't remember what mine was.

In the end I got treated and got rid of the virus.

Can't remember now if the viral load is/was that significant for treatment in my case - GT3??

Made a difference though when it become undetected!

It's funny that this is all a distant memory now I am free of Hep C.

All the best with your treatment,

Jeff

Hello 808cruiser, welcome to the forum! Strange as it may seem, your viral load has very little correlation to cure rate. Patients with high viral loads have the same excellent cure chances as anyone else, 95% for Genotypes 1,2,4,5,6 and 90% for Genotype 3, when treated with the modern direct-acting antiviral medications, or DAAs (e.g. Harvoni®, Epclusa®, etc). Besides, 4 million is not very high, I know FixHepC patients who started treatment with about 30 million viral load and got cured easily. It's common to see a patient with a 16 million viral load go to 1,600 in the first week of treatment, these drugs are remarkably effective. Please this thread of the forum for more on this topic fixhepc.com/forum/fixhepc-admin/1930-viral-load.html#26786 Best of luck to you.

Hi 808 cruiser and welcome.

As the others have mentioned,amount of viral load is of really no consequence. When I was first diagnosed mine was 9 mill. and then when I started my first treatment years later it was 6.5 mill.

It flucuates up and down on a regular basis. It is a war between them replicating and your immune system fighting them.

Hopfully you will be treating soon with these excellent drugs that stop that replicating process in its tracks.

Hello 808cruiser,

2-3 million is the average.

People have higher levels when their immune systems are not doing much. While this might sound bad, the damage from Hep C is driven by the immune response. The little critters don't eat much, so, curious as it may seem, people with a viral load of 10 million are often a lot healthier and less damaged by the Hep C than people with a viral load of 10 thousand where there immune systems are working hard to get rid of the virus and killing lots of liver cells in the process.

Anyway 4 weeks after you start treatment you will have < 15 ...

Hi 808cruiser,

I know those figures can seem crazy high and worrying but like others my viral load was all over the place before treatment. Anywhere between 1 million and 5+ million and beyond. It doesn't matter much where it is when you start treatment - the most important thing is that those little critters are undetectable at the end.

Good luck with your treatment.

Finally got a final blood test done and am waiting for the results. A separate CBC showed a change in ALT from 35 to 13 7 months post treatment (Harvoni) and my platelet counts are slowly rising , 132 on the last test and 143 on the most recent. The Hep C results can take 3-4 weeks but they notify your doctor if you have any viral load so no call after 2 weeks is a good sign

While on the treatment my WBC MONOCYTES were at 9.4 which my FD was concerned about but this test put them at 7.0 so I am chalking that up to the Harvoni.