I do sometimes lose visibility of some of the tabs myself, refreshing the screen brings them back when that happens..

Comhghairdeas!

Sir, that’s great news, may you sleep well knowing it’s gone.

Hi berrinice,

There doesn’t seem to be much information on Alzheimer’s and HCV although I found a 234k patient (insurance) study from Taiwan which compares the incidence of ‘dementia’ – without directly referencing Alzheimer’s. It tracked 117k HCV patients 50 years and older against a 117k randomly picked but age and sex matched non-HCV cohort over ten years from 1999-2009. All patients were determined not to have dementia at commencement of study. They did find enough evidence of a slightly higher incidence developing in the HCV group to state that it “may increase the risk” of dementia. But I don’t find this too surprising given what we already know of the long term effects of HCV, including high iron level and many others, on both our physical and mental health as we age.

However they also found that having antiviral treatment reduced the risk even in those days with interferon then peginterferon and the low SVR rates in those times. This finding agrees with other more recent studies where we consistently see reaching SVR results in statistically significant improvements in patient health, wellbeing and lifespan.

Now that these DAAs with their high cure rate are more accessible, getting treatment as early as possible and reaching SVR is the best way of reducing the risks.

PS it must be over a year since your tx now?

Congratulations SShady43.

Hi GF,

I think it is important to also note the follow on paragraph from your quote which includes:

……and Karavetsos counsels pharmaceutical clients at DLA Piper, a Washington, D.C., law firm.

So he is currently acting as a paid advisor to those with a vested interest in preserving their “money printing” monopoly.

PS In his previous role he probably did encounter examples of illegally manufactured drugs such as he describes but to then try to somehow equate these examples to the world of international generics manufacturing as he attempts to do is just scaremongering on behalf of his clients.

A response from the AASLD:

AASLD and IDSA would like to express our serious concerns regarding the recent Cochrane Group Review concluding that there is a lack of valid evidence supporting the benefit of direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy for chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV), and its supposition: “the possibility of potentially harming people with chronic hepatitis ought to be considered before treating people with hepatitis C with DAAs.” Our review of this Cochrane publication suggests significant flaws in this analysis, yielding a misleading and a harmful conclusion.

and

……even early data from the DAA experience support clear improvements in clinical outcomes that can be measured in the short term. Cure of HCV infection immediately reduces symptoms and organ dysfunction from severe extrahepatic manifestations including cryoglobulinemic vasculitis, a complication affecting up to 10 percent of HCV-infected patients.

https://www.aasld.org/about-aasld/press-room/aasld-expresses-concern-cochrane-review-daas

Edit: EASL have also responded along similar lines:

“EASL, the European Association for the Study of the Liver, one of the world leading associations of liver specialists, feels compelled to express its serious concerns after the recent publication of a Cochrane Group systematic review entitled “Direct acting antivirals for chronic hepatitis C” by Jakobsen et al.”

http://www.journal-of-hepatology.eu/pb/assets/raw/Health%20Advance/journals/jhepat/CochraneEASLJMP003.pdf

Hi Coral,

What is the format (file name extension) of your document? i.e. What are the last three or four characters after the dot such as “coralsjourney.###” If you used “Word” it will probably start with .do followed by two more characters.

The other option is to just copy and paste it into a quote (the little “speech bubble” icon in the post editor).