TOPIC:

Hello Friends,

I am from India.

A month ago, I had gone for a complete body check for my mom, age 57. There were some abnormalities with basic Blood tests under CBC and LFT section.

The doctor advised me to check up with a Liver specialist doctor. Under his supervision had gone for Live and Hepatitis under which results tested positive with HEP C - genotype 3a, with VIRAL Load - 474809 U/ml

Today doctor has prescribed my mom for
SOVIHEP-V (400+100mg) & RIBAVIRIN (200mg) for 6 months.
Plus Vitamin and calcium medicine as SUPRDYN and CCM.

Some of the vital figures from the medical report are :

Platelets - 76,000
Prothrombin time - 16.4
IgG -3210

I need some help and some insight into how to deal with this.

Have read some articles for HEP C and just confused as how much this has affected my mom's health. The only thing presently I can see by myself is she is feeling too low on energy and there is swelling at times on her legs.

Any advise any input is much appreciated in advance, please.

Hello Vikramb,

Your doctor has made a good prescription - the SOVIHEP-V is Sofosbuvir/Velpatasvir which is known as Epclusa. It is a very good choice for treating genotype 3.

Your mothers low platelets and high prothrombin time suggest reasonably advanced liver disease, but we would expect the treatment to be successful and her quality of life to improve.

Using ribavirin is a good idea but can have some side effects - we need to keep an eye on FBC in particular to make sure no severe anemia or low platelets happen - if so we need to reduce/stop ribavirin.

The Ribavirin dose is usually 1000mg/day for patients <75kg and 1200mg/day for patients >75kg. This is taken 1/2 in morning and half at night so either

3x200mg morning + 2x200mg night (1000mg total)
3x200mg morning + 3x200mg night (1200mg total)

The low energy and swelling of legs probably relate to the liver problems.

Thanks for the reply.

The doctor has also suggested doing a blood test -CBC every week. Should I see improvement in platelets count in a week itself or it takes some time to get things normal completely.

Also, I noticed the doctor indicating marginal liver cirrhosis as well. Will tablets help to control the increase in that as well.

Thanks for all the help and info in advance.