We have 33.5% cirrhosis patients in the group we are tracking. This is much higher than most of the published clinical trials.
What we observe is that F3/F4 patients do take longer to reach undetected.
In Gilead's trials <25 was what was used so you would have been <25 detected, rather than 15 detected at 4 weeks, so it is in line with expectations.
It will go to undetected, maybe through <15, but undetected should really read <10 or <8 because this is closer to the real meaning.
With F4 GT3 you do need 24 weeks treatment to deliver a 90% SVR rate.
Ketogenic diet, B12 and Vit D may assist, but that's speculative at the moment. The "energy slump" some patients get about a month into treatment does seem to respond to B-B-Berocca.
I would not worry too much. It's not the millions of die easy HCV virions that cause relapse. It's the handful of resistant mutants that we simply can't measure.
The observation of slower response does suggest why the extended treatment time is required for F4 GT3