Hello Sale,

AST, ALT and GGT are all low. We commonly see changes of +/- 20% and these minor movements have no significance.

Best of luck for SVR12

Hi Jeff,

Glad to hear you’ve skipped COVID!

Best Wishes

James

Thank you for the kind words Sale-Sale

My calculations suggest you are now 2 months into treatment.

How are things going?

Hello Sale-Sale,

I am sorry to hear your doctor is not so communicative.

1. Your AST=32, ALT=32 and platelets (thrombociti)=165 at the start of treatment means liver is ok
2. The fall in ALT indicates the treatment is working as expected
3. Chronic EBV is rare but can happen – it does not seem to be having much impact on blood where monocytosis is expected – it will probably settle with treatment of HCV
4. Insomnia is, unfortunately, quite a common side effect of sofosbuvir – sleeping tablets may help
5. Your vitamin levels are generally ok (our lower limit of vitamin D is 50 so 46 is ok – get some sunshine on skin and that will fix without supplements).
6. With vitamins, if a little is good, more in not better and can be poisonous; the best way to get your vitamins is by eating a variety of foods.

For you, the numbers we are interested in are platelets, AST, ALT and HCV viral load; the rest are largely irrelevant and likely to be normal.

Hi Hope,

Those results are not too bad. You platelets being 150 is good.

Over-treating is fine provided you are not getting much in the way of side effects.

An extra 4 weeks gets almost all the benefit of an extra 12 but at 1/3 the cost, but if the extra cost is not an issue I can’t say I’d blame you, particularly after failing IFN x 2

All our antibiotics and all of our antivirals have the same issue. While they do kill almost all the target they provide the right conditions to allow resistant mutants to thrive.

RNA viruses are genetically unstable so mutate very quickly.

There’s really not a lot we can do about that reality…

I hope having some small molecule drugs available may help bring a bit of normality back!

Hi Fitz,

I have a number of bottles of pills in the kitchen larder. I acquired them because there was some initial suggestion they might work for Covid.

While I do have some Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) I never bothered to acquire any Ivermectin because it never had a snowball’s chance in hell of working. Yes Ivermectin does kill the virus in a test tube but at a level that is 1000x higher than the level it reaches in our blood. Sadly the evidence says HCQ does not work.

Although Merck’s molnupiravir is not a good as the initial data suggested

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/merck-says-covid-19-pill-cuts-hospitalization-death-risk-by-30-2021-11-26/

that will be the next thing I chase down. The usual suspects in India have been making generics although none are released as yet (pending DCGI approval which is likely to follow FDA approval)