It's not common to be diagnosed with acute HCV but three members here were also acutes - Moahunter, DebNevada and alagirl.
How accurate was your diagnosis of "acute" versus chronic hepatitis? It seems like you'd have to be seen asap to treat as an acute and it may already be a bit late in the day.
I can't see you needing a biopsy if you are acute, because little or no liver damage would be assumed.
If you ARE acute, you should see an experienced liver specialist who has all your records, so he can reliably figure this out. Treating acutes is less standardized - some use monotherapy but more docs are moving to treating with combo therapy.
Acutes, though, are treated for only half the time that chronics are, (i.e., 24 weeks for geno ones and 12 weeks for geno ones) with fabulous success rates among all genotypes.
Note ALT's can be sky-rocket high during the acute phase (usually greater than a ten-fold elevation).
One thing to consider is that women tend to spontaneously clear the virus more than men, although the reference I read said "young" (?) women.
"Acute hepatitis C refers to the first 6 months after infection with HCV. Between 60% to 70% of people infected develop no symptoms during the acute phase. In the minority of patients who experience acute phase symptoms, they are generally mild and nonspecific, and rarely lead to a specific diagnosis of hepatitis C. Symptoms of acute hepatitis C infection include decreased appetite, fatigue, abdominal pain, jaundice, itching, and flu-like symptoms..."
"Spontaneous viral clearance rates are highly variable and between 10–60%[2] of persons infected with HCV clear the virus from their bodies during the acute phase as shown by normalization in liver enzymes (alanine transaminase (ALT) & aspartate transaminase (AST)), and plasma HCV-RNA clearance (this is known as spontaneous viral clearance). "
..."Previous practice was to not treat acute infections to see if the person would spontaneously clear; recent studies have shown that treatment during the acute phase of genotype 1 infections has a greater than 90% success rate with half the treatment time required for chronic infections.[7]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_C
"Patients with acute hepatitis C are a major challenge to management and therapy. Because such a high proportion of patients with acute infection develop chronic hepatitis C, prevention of chronicity has become a focus of attention. In small studies, 83 to 100 percent of persons treated within 1 to 4 months of onset have had resolution of the infection. What is unclear is when to initiate treatment, at what dose, for what duration, and with which regimen. A practical but rigorous approach is to start peginterferon (in usual doses) and ribavirin (800 mg daily) for 24 weeks if HCV RNA is still detected 3 months after onset of infection. The role of ribavirin and the use of shorter courses of therapy are currently under evaluation."
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/chronichepc/
Maybe have a look at this old thread concerning three of our former "acutes" here on the forum:
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Hepatitis-C/Treatment-for-Acutes/show/486916
And here's a good, older article, in which monotherapy is used, but I think docs now may be leaning more to combo despite its conclusion but still for half the time.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/503764_2
"...The largest uncontrolled study which employed induction dosing with standard IFN alpha 2b indicated 95% of treated patients achieved a sustained virological response with only 6 months of therapy.[12] It is unlikely that the newer forms of IFN, namely PEG-IFN alpha in combination with ribavirin are going to be much more successful!"
The best thing you can do is educate yourself about your options but in the case of an acute diagnosis, you unfortunately don't have much time to line things up if you want to treat as an acute. Here are some threads from other acutes that may be help you get a better picture:
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Hepatitis-C/Anybody-out-like-me-who-can-tell-me-their-story/show/489329
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Hepatitis-C/Outcomes-of-Treatment-for-Acute-Hepatitis-C/show/95667