Hi Mnem,
This seems like a very strange review from the Cochrane group, which is usually well respected for medical myth-busting.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the Guardian article:
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/08/...e-no-clinical-effect
Here is a link to the abstract of the paper:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012143.pub2/full
As far as I can understand, the conclusion of this paper is that patients with hepatitis C will not die straight away if they take a placebo or a modern DAA and get a Sustained Virological Response, and therefore, there is no proof that DAAs will prevent people who are sick from dying. Duh....
Well, since we all know that hepatitis C is a slow killer, this is probably not completely false. But if you ask a dumb question, you will get a dumb answer... And then somebody else will mis-quote it to arrive at an even dumber headline.
Speaking as someone who is cured of hep-C (and who now feels a heck of a lot better than when I had it) I would recommend to file and forget all this under the "dumb science" folder. Or maybe nominate it for a prize here?
www.improbable.com/ig/winners/
Please check out that last one (Perception Prize) about investigating if things look different when bending over and looking through your legs
Cheers,
Edit:
OK, I just went and stood on my head for two minutes. The conclusion of the paper should really be "compared to taking a placebo, there is no measurable life-threatening risk in taking DAAs"...
So just do it, and get yourself cured!
Diagnosed Jan 2015: GT3, A0+F0/F1. Fatigue + Brain-Fog.
Started Sof+Dac from fixHepC 10-Nov-2015. NO sides.
Pre-Tx: AST 82, ALT 133, Viral Load 1 900 000.
Week4: AST 47, ALT 58. VL < 15 (unquantifiable).
Week12 (EOT): AST 30, ALT 26, VL UND
Week16 (EOT+4): AST 32, ALT 28, GGT 24, VL UND
Week28 (EOT+16): AST 26, ALT 22, GGT 24, VL UND
Ever grateful to Dr James.
Relapsed somewhere after all that... Bummer!
Jan 2018: VL 63 000 (still GT3).