No worries, LG. The US manufacturer appears to ship internationally. Not recommending for or against.

Meg – My understanding is that the therapeutic dose is 75mg, per 24 hour period. The recommended dosage per the label distributes that 75mg dose in three portions – one 25mg dose every 8 hours.

For me a huge plus is that safety is already well established with the putative therapeutic dose of 75mg for a 24 hour period for Hep C, because it is the same 75mg per 24 hour dose for a runny nose, or an itchy rash, and the medication has been in use for the latter purposes for ~ 60 years.

Either way, because none of the studies for efficacy of Chlorcyclizine against Hep C have been conducted in human subjects, we don’t really know if the medication will work as well in people as it does in human liver cells transplanted into mice, or human liver cells tested outside of the body ‘in vitro’.

But, if it turns out to work as well in our bodies as it does ‘in vitro’ and in human liver cells in mice (and that is a big ‘IF’], we potentially have another fantastic, and affordable weapon in our arsenal against this horrible disease!

That would be brilliant!

I ordered a couple of boxes from Amazon yesterday (runny nose). The manufacturer has a website. I’ll send you that link by PM.

Theoretically, it seems to me if 75mg over 24 hours is the therapeutic dose. Dosing 25mg every 8 hours, would keep the dosage at therapeutic levels, and avoid peaks and troughs in serum levels which might allow the virus some wiggle room during the trough phase.

Also, if the medication acts to keep virus from entering cells to replicate (as it has been proven to do in studies of human liver cells transplanted into mice, and also human liver cells in vitro), its role is prophylactic, sort of locking the little buggers down until they die on their own, and/or allowing the DAAs catch them where they live and nuke the shit out of them.

I suppose an analogy would be barring all the entrances and exits to a structure full of HCV, nuking it with DAAs, and then quarantining the survivors where they reside, and laying siege until any survivors simply die off.

If HCV lives outside the body for ~60 days (presumably because that is as long as it can survive without replicating), then it seems that if it is unable to replicate within the body, that ~60 days would be the minimum period to treat with chlorcyclizine, and that twice that would be prudent.

All of this of course is the theory of a layman patient with HCV – so really just thinking out loud, and not in any way intended to be anything beyond pure conjecture.

Thanks for your excellent input, Gaj. I did a little research, and the dose to keep a runny nose at bay is one tablet every 8 hours. So for that purpose 30 tablets is a 10 day supply.

The stuff hasn’t had any kind of patent protection for years, so it is little wonder Big Pharma doesn’t seem to be interested in it. One of the things that is especially intriguing to me is that (according to the published research) Chorcyclizine appears to keep HCV from entering cells to replicate in the first place. Also that the studies seem to suggest that it does not interfere with the mechanisms used by DAAs to destroy the virus, and may actually be used in conjunction with DAAs to assist in shutting down HCV’s ability to replicate.

Exciting stuff if it actually turns out to be as effective as the studies suggest!