LG – there is a lab in UK – Quest Diagnostics.
https://www.questdiagnostics.com/uk/contact_us.html

I used them a while ago. Their parent company is big in the US. I didn’t initially think of them because they have a strict policy to do tests only for doctors who are registered with them. That was a stumbling block for me but it might not be for you, dunno.

dt

Ken – Many thanks for chiming in here.

Anyway, here’s what I expect to get from a VL report –

a)
DETected and the VL number given.
b)
DETected but no number because there were some virus found but not enough to count.
d)
UNDetected

However, to properly put these results in context I need to know the SENSITIVITY of the test. ie,
DOES UND mean that the test can’t see any virus below 10? Below 15? Below 500?

And maybe at UND they can’t see any virus at all.

We know that there can be virus still there, even if the most sensitive PCR can’t see it. We all live with this concept. However, some people are monitoring small declines in their VL. To them it makes all the difference in the world if the test stops being able to see any virus at 500, or if it can still see the virus all the way down to 10. It’s like trying to encapsule the meds with a scale that only measures to grams when you need it to measure to milligrams. Every scale tells you when you buy it to what limits it can measure accurately, right?

And every lab test also does. So why not put those limits on the PCR report? And why give me an answer which I can only call disinformation and double talk? Is their lab equipment not up to the same sensitivity as the competition and are they trying to keep that quiet?

Agree with you LG. We’ve both been through so much sub-standard medical service now that we shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am. Indeed, has anything just worked first time, no problems. I think I’d be accurate to say – not much.

dt

If you have stopped treatment for a few weeks, then my feeling is that what ever else happens is just another, unrelated problem. How can someone relate a “rash” to a drug they stopped 6 months ago?

I’ll tell you how.
I’m not relating the following to this rash case in particular, but here’s what I’ve been looking at.

Let’s take my own case. I know that I have a genetic predisposition to gluten intolerance / coeliac because I’ve had a genetic analysis. However until my mid 30’s my body ran like a perfectly tuned machine. Everything worked to optimal. I could pull a 36 hour shift and go party afterwards. I could eat anything. Then something happened. I gained weight. I became sluggish. I started to have trouble with constipation. I started to have food intolerance symptoms, bloating, wind etc. I got tired easily. My best theory is that I picked up the virus around then.

However – and here’s the point – these things have not gone away now that I have been UND for weeks. Now, as some posters suggest, they might still go away by themselves given time, and that would be my best case scenario. But I’ve been studying up on gluten sensitivity and apparently ONCE THE GENE IS TURNED ON you have it for life.

So why did the gene get turned on after 30+ years of it being blissfully dormant. Guess what. An acute or chronic viral infection can simply overload the immune system and tip it into attack mode. It starts to attack the virus and at the same time anything else it identifies as a foreign invader – in my case the gluten protein. After that, all kinds of autoimmune conditions can appear in any part of the body. Thyroid, fibromyalgia, adrenal stress, neuropathy, brain stuff, etc.

I’m not a doctor and I’m in the middle of research on all this so apologies if it is not more informative, but at the moment all I can do is point a finger for anybody who has developed autoimmune conditions. Obviously if you’ve had interferon then that would have exacerbated the situation. The message is that if your genetics have been altered by the hepC infection, if certain genes have been turned on, then you can’t look to that reversing itself after SVR. This applies to any condition for which there is a genetic disposition, not just autoimmune conditions.

dt