Welcome Rikke,

Thankyou for adding your story here which will help others to know more about the situation in Denmark.

Here is a link to how you can add details to your signature https://fixhepc.com/forum/technical-support/977-how-to-add-signature-details-to-your-profile.html

I did splitdog, see my comment about “sit on their laurels”.
There are approx 175 million potential customers left and those success rates you quote are based on 12+ week treatments. From what I’m reading the competition are already developing medications that achieve those or better rates in considerably less time. If that eventuates and given the development times involved Gilead may well find it is yesterday’s news in the HCV field with their only effective response then to slash pricing of their current options to target the ‘economy’ end of the market……luckily they have a lot of room to do that.

(I’m proposing this purely from an investment perspective but would also note that Gilead have not been an R&D innovator in this field anyway. So far they have have been astute purchasers (Sofosbuvir) or developed “me too” products (Ledipasvir and Velpatasvir). Not sure of the provenance of Voxilaprevir, that could be their own novel work?)

S[/color]M[color=#004400]A[/color]S[color=#0088ff]H[/color]I[color=#004400]N[/color][color=#008844″>G!

Congratulations on SVR12 rightsaidfred.

Hi Ben,

Many of the members here have been in the same situation with their doctors initially and often those same doctors have come around when they see results. Also depending on your current liver status the monitoring may only require running and checking tests, to the extent that for example the new Australian rules allow and encourage prescribing and monitoring of non cirrhotics to be done via local GP’s. As this site has an international audience perhaps let us know a bit more about your liver health and where you are located as someone from your own country may have been in a similar position and be able to advise the best options. In the meantime to allay your specialist or GP’s concerns perhaps you should give them printouts or downloads of the following:

https://hepatitiscnewdrugs.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/generic-direct-acting-antivirals-for.html?m=1

Which includes the following quote from the Secretary General of EASL:

“”There is a clear role for generic treatments such as these for people with Hepatitis C across the world. The implications of increased availability of these drugs could be enormous, presenting more people with the possibility of a ‘cure’ for what is often a debilitating condition,” said Professor Laurent Castera, EASL Secretary General.”

http://fixhepc.com/blog/item/65-internationa-liver-congress-2016-dr-freeman.html

https://fixhepc.com/forum/forum-gp-cheat-sheet.html

Welcome Wair,

Congratulations on making the decision to treat and I’m glad that you’ve found that like many of us your side effects are minimal.

Your LFTs look good and they will improve further as your treatment progresses. I’m sure Dr Freeman will have discussed the indicators for extending treatment with you, including that once your viral load becomes undetected there is little value in continuing to test that during treatment. It is good to hear that you now appear to have the support of your own doctor should you need more testing.

Please feel free to share your excitement here like many of us do and best wishes for successful SVR.

Congratulations on reaching SVR12 willeert!

“multidrug resistant proteins” – are these the RAVS that are talked about?

Hi LG,

No, this isn’t related to viral resistance to drugs (RAV or RAS) where the virus natively has or develops resistance to the drugs.

In simple terms, there are proteins in our bodies such as those found in the Blood Brain Barrier (BB which naturally prevent toxins (and sometimes also medicines) from entering our brains which is normally protective for us so is usually seen as a good thing. But in this case they are saying that if the HCV virus has made its way into a patient’s central nervous system/brain and if it is replicating there, then the normal protective blocking processes of the BBB may make it harder for the DAAs to reach the virus and stop it replicating.

I’ve highlighted the two points above because they are the key to sabrecats question. The DAAs don’t kill HCV but rather slow or stop it replicating and give our own immune system a chance to do its job properly. But currently we don’t know if it replicates in the CNS/brain which it would need to do for the BBB to cause issues.

It is however unclear if the CNS itself supports the viral replication…(page 6)

So at the moment while we know that HCV causes neurological problems I think the jury is still out on whether this problem also contributes to some of the group that relapse.