Hello Hazel,

It will be the Riba making you feel bad. If you read http://fixhepc.com/forum/gt3/369-gt3-high-svr-rates-with-daclatasvir.html you will find an n=468 study (the biggest Sof+Dac study to date) that failed to show any benefit in an subgroup of F3 & F4 GT3 patients by taking Ribavirin. If you are doing 24 weeks this suggests that your results will be equal or better – Riba than + Riba.

Ribavirin has a 1/2 life of 12 days so when you stop it takes 12 days to fall to 1/2 the starting level, 24 days to fall to 1/4, 36 days to fall to 1/8.

I understand why intuitively it might seem “more is better” (and therefore + Riba is better) but the evidence suggests that is not the case.

At this point I will be happy if I clear & survive – and the lesions in my liver don’t jettison me into a whole new nightmare.

However the goal posts might hopefully shift – and I agree – it would be good to start developing some evidence based or even compelling alternative data on how the HCV damaged liver, portal hypertension, varices and ascites might be modified and the prospect of HCC inhibited – however, marginally – once they are no longer being fuelled by HCV generated inflammation. good one. archer.

Hi Gaj an Archer,

interesting thoughts. I was F3 in 2012 and I expect while religiously adhering to the “WAIT” my liver would have gradated to F4.

I notice on the med calculator Dr Freeman posted that the chances for SVR for Genotype 3’a’s like me goes from 24:1 with F3, to 9:1 with F3-F4.

Treatment for me being above F3 is twenty four weeks vs 12 weeks for F3.

I hope that getting treated does get the scarring under control a bit as I may increase the odds of a SVR.

Message for people like me aged 60 appears to be get treated asap to get the scarring under control.

yours

J.

Happy New Year to you all. May 2016 be extra kind to you.

I have been scrumming through my results over the last 10 months and came across my Fibroscan result. I don’t think the result has ever been explained to me clearly (only that it was “okay” so thought I would run it past those of you that may know what the numbers mean.

Findings: The appearance of the liver is within normal. No focal lesions visible.
AFRI results:

ARFI – Median Velocity 1.16 IQR 0.18 The first radiologist
1.15 IQR 0.11 The second radiologist

Both ARFI measurement sets are concordant in the less than F2 range. I was always of the opinion that the Fibroscan was F0 but am starting to wonder now if it was read wrong …….. my GP had not had any past experience in these sorts of scans. I did fax it through to Dr Freeman when I sent all my test results to him but forgot to ask him what it meant.(was too excited about staring my treatment at the time).

Thanks in advance.