Just curious How much the cost of testing of ALT? In my country AST testing is four USD. VL is 250USD.

I do the VL privately because the public hospital cant do it.

Agree with you, Thurl.
The ball will hopefully start rolling. Really, the NHS needs to greet this with open arms as it will save it a fortune.
Deb

To be fair, my local hepatology clinic were obstructive (and continue to be), but my GPs have been as helpful as they could reasonably be, doing everything except the vl tests with blood work and helping facilitate a fibroscan.

Hi Tomas & congrats on getting your meds already, well done.

On my Jolie’s Party thread I wrote about the monitoring in greater details, in short I had no problem with getting the basic monitoring from my consultant after I emailed him & reassured about the med’s quality, tests, etc. & gave link to the blog on this site.
He said NO to the prescription (as he only works for NHS so no private practise or private scrip was possible) but YES to monitoring once I got the generic meds.
It’s really great that our little UK tx group is growing here, the more people from the UK start to treat the easier it will be for others to follow & hopefully the UK consultants will feel more reassured in respecting & supporting our decision.

My consultant recently told me that I’ve made the right choice to start to treat with generic meds rather then waiting for NHS to get their act together, as apparently I’d not get the new DAA anyway as NHS only offer them to patients with the Fibro score of 9.6 kPa as a cut off point at present, so any lower then that no luck, you’ll get the old Peg/Riba & Sof instead but no Dac.
Nationally they’re trying to push the score downwards but who knows how long that will take, maybe another 1-2 years.

So we’re all very fortunate to have this access to generic meds thanks to the incredible Doc James & team & many other people like Greg J. & Rachel at Mes., Monk Meds, amongst many others good hearted people, who made this possible for us.

Hi Deb,
Yes, the threshold has come down from 11pKA last year to 9.8 pKA. so in a way this is good news as more people would get the new DAA, still people like me @ 8.7 pKA would not get the new meds. Probably next year the score will get down to 8, so am glad I started to tx in December.
I’m feeling really good, a bit of insomnia, that’s about it, lots of energy, the brain fog has gone.
All bloods are perfect & am awaiting for my VL results @ 5 weeks.

How are you ?, am really excited to read you, LG & Tomas are all getting aboard.
Did you started already ?

Hi guys, My last consultant told me there was no treatmet until June earliest for me, but he also said they were ‘no longer treating GT1s with Interferon’ so no offer of the triple either (not that I wanted it!) . They are setting up a whole new system, which sounds like it will be good once in motion, but what happens in the meantime, you know? no mention of fibro limits or anything like that, I was just told that there was no treatment for me until then at all, full stop?

I think the situation is variable from hospital to hospital. He also stated ‘the nurses will be doing everything and you won’t be seeing a consultant’. It’s an excellent hospital and I can see them doing good things in the future, but that’s no good for individuals who are waiting for this to begin, you know?

So, I advise sound out your own hospital protocol, GP etc and seek out the good Drs who believe appropriate duty of care is needed when you’ve made an adult, informed choice and there is supply chain integrity, even if they can’t condone it – Also offer evidence & info for your informed choice as Jolie, Debs and I have done, plus Dr F’s GP Cheat Sheet I also feel you may want to seek out the consultants who don’t have ‘conflicts of interests’ ‘ ……

5 weeks bloods all normal, ALT 18 (!) – down from ALT 73 at the start of tx.
Waiting for 5 weeks VL test results.
Feeling Fantastic !

Wow Jolie – That’s great news !
Well done you !

Debs – So Glad you are starting treatment soon