Hello Beaches,

Totally agree, my remark was not intended to claim that 10% is a nice number…. It is not at all. Australia is in any case leading the path for people to get treated for HCV and has made a lot of progress by compare with other countries. Whether it could be better, oh yes, they can be better, but aren’t… So I am with you on this.

My remark was in fact a sad ascertainment towards the situation from Romania and thinking that if at least 10% would have been treated in Romania that would still be something by compare with the currrent status quo. Without going too much in details (as I did already in others posts) – people in RO get a lot of promises about the new treatment, but when trying to get treated, apart from the expensive treatment there exist also bureaucratic barriers (like you need to get a voucher from your doctor to make the blood tests and fibromax to a certain laboratory, yet the doctor does not receive these vouchets or receives only couple of them… And during this time he/she has hundreds of patients waiting to be treated).
What you in Australia have now seems to be (actually it is) mission impossible in Romania.
And to make things even worse, there are many people ( in RO) who think about the generic HCV drugs as being a kind of, let’s say it nicely, “occult” thing….
Some weeks ago I posted in another thread that the president of the NHS from Romania (CNAS) made a statement that from the Fall of 2016 other HCV patients, apart F4 stages, might be treated, but the reality is that they try to include F3 patients into treatment, but not the F0-F2 patients (there was an article published somewhere, but I cannot remember where). This means that for people like me, if there would have been no Australia, no fixhepc, no Greg Jefferys, I would have been sick and on the way to F3, then F4, then …..

Sorry for any possible confusion related to my previous post,

Cheers,
RHF

here is a link about the studies being made for SOF+VEL when treating for GT3 and GT2 patients. To be noted that GT3 success rate is increased, at 95% (ASTRAL-3 Trial).
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1512612#t=article

Cheers,
RHF

Hi Coral,
I am very sorry for such news, however think positive and have hope !
You made an interesting remark about feeling that the virus is back, it does confirm what dr. Freeman says in this video at 4min18sec:

Cheers,
RHF

Hi Everybody,

couple of feedbacks regarding my previous post:

@Fitz & Matt: I posted the link about Greg’s post in order to highlight the aspect about the anxiety felt by patients when they reach EOT and the waiting time of 12 weeks. It provided also couple of arguments about possible causes of relapse. My intention (and probably I should have said this from the beginning) was to touch the idea of having trust in the DAAs despite the anxiety during the waiting times.

My understanding regarding the mechanism of action was that Chlorcyclizine might block HCV in entering the liver cells. So it is a different mechanism than the DAAs which affects the replication of HCV. On one side, the idea of using it sounds like an additional protection, after the DAAs treatment is finished. On the other side, I have in mind that outside the body, in dried blood, HCV may survive upto 6 weeks, while inside the body there is a more “friendly environment” for the HCV, therefore if after the DAAs treatment there will still be some RAVs hidden somewhere in the body, the Chlorcyclizine might need to be used for more weeks.
Who knows, maybe DAAs + Chlorcyclizine might be something like the case of getting rid of the bugs: you put poison (aka you take the DAAs) and the bugs getting in contact with it will die, but some bugs will remain in a crack in wall and might survive, so if you block that crack, the bugs will finally die from starvation . It would be a nice dream. Yet dreams are dreams, reality is reality and sometimes dreams do become reality , so it is hard (at least for me at this moment) to give solid opinions.

Anyway, please consider my “message of caution” not as a kind of “do not do it”, rather as a kind of “research more, ask more, get a professional view and if it turns to be (or might be) safe for you, give it a try”.

Cheers,
RHF

Hi Fitz,

…thank you for sharing it. It made me reflect again that HCV must be treated asap, no matter on which stage the liver is.

And, if allowed, another thought: I do not get the picture why people talk so often/much about the 500 000 people that die yearly because of HCV and neglect the rest of 150 000 000 infected people who might live a better life if they get treated sooner. It is not fair, because it creates the impression that HCV is in the end not such a big issue. My brain cannot imagine how big a crowd of 150 000 000 people look like…

Cheers
RHF

Oups, I missed the info about the cortisol… Thank you Fitz.
Perhaps a copy/paste error then? (106 instead of 160 ) Just kidding….

RHF

Hi Meg,

looks very very good .
About your cholesterol level, any stress lately? As far as I know, there exist a link between stress level and cholesterol.
Or you can have a look also here : http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodpharma/sbd-smd/drug-med/sbd_smd_2015_harvoni_173180-eng.php where it is specified that:
“Ledipasvir was well-tolerated in studies up to six months in the rat and nine months in the dog. The primary effects noted in toxicology studies were decreased weight, weight gain and food consumption and minor increases in cholesterol.”

Boa saúde

RHF