Oh ok.all of my labs returned to normal so hopefully that is a good sign.other than 1 million little virons came back.everything else seems good.I will get blood work done in a few months and see.
I just want to add this: When my rash got bad, the dermatologist did a biopsy of one of the hives. That biopsy showed possibilities for several different causes for the rash. So, she did an ANA test, which was positive. (I know my ANA was negative in 1994.) However, I had read that interferon can make the ANA test positive during treatment and then usually it reverts to negative after treatment. Anyway, because the ANA test was positive, she did an ENA panel. The ENA panel tests for specific disorders. All of them were negative (much to my joy and relief). So all I had was the allergic reaction to the drugs.
I think OH is correct. It takes a while to get the drugs out of the system. Tests that may come back positive now, may come back negative later.
One thing I forgot to mention in my other post is that they can test for thyroid problems and diabetes without doing all of those above mentioned test. They can run a thyroid panel and they can do glucose tests for diabetes.
I can't recall exactly when you finished tx, but I don't think it was that long ago.
Please be patient. It takes time for our bodies to clear these strong meds out of your systems.
At 3 months post tx, I'm still surprised to find myself improving.
Good luck~
Autoimmune disorders can become apparent during interferon treatment. It is my understanding that the percentage of these cases is small.
If they are testing for autoimmune disorders they usually start with an ANA (Antinuclear Antibody), although sometimes they will run several tests right away. If the ANA test is positive then they proceed with further testing to determine if there is a specific autoimmune disorder present. I included some links towards the bottom that wil tell you about the various tests.
Here are a couple of things I found, both of them from National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine:
"The era of interferon (IFN) administration in the treatment of patients with chronic viral hepatitis creates an essential turning point for therapy of these diseases. Incessant progress of the new, more efficient and lower side effects of interferon causes decrease in treatment withdrawal. The side effects like myalgia, nausea, fatigue and loss of appetite, usually with good reaction for symptomatic treatment and intensity of the symptoms decreases during treatment continuation. Due to strong immuno-modulatory activities and long-lasting therapy, autoimmune diseases are observed in some cases. Therefore treatment process should be carefully and trifle monitored especially in autoantibodies appearance aspect. To the most common interferon mediated autoimmune diseases belong thyroiditis, autoimmune hepatitis and thrombocytopenia. Interstitial pneumonitis, systemic lupus erythematosus, type I diabetes mellitus, asthma and sarcoidosis exacerbation as well as glomerular diseases are observed rarely. In our paper we discus an issue of autoimmune diseases induction phenomena caused by interferon therapy administrated in the treatment of chronic viral hepatitis."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17941466
"In face of numerous benefits induced by therapy based on interferon (IFN) associated with ribavirin for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C, there is an increasing concern regarding its tolerance, which can, in some cases, reduce the quality of life as well as compliance of patients. Among the less common side effects, there are the autoimmune ones which can be globally divided into appearance or increase in titres of auto-antibodies and/or manifestation of overt autoimmune pathologies. Whereas the former may concern more than 50% of treated subjects, the latter is reported in only 1-2% of patients under therapy. Thyroid dysfunction represents the well-studied autoimmune disorder. The presence of pre-existing anti-thyroid antibodies and being of female sex, constitute relevant risk factors for the development of a disease involving this gland. Often the treatment of thyropathy must be continuous in spite of IFN discontinuation because the disturbance usually does not abate with stopping antiviral therapy. Some observations have pointed out to the fact that IFN can lead to the development of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Sometimes, during, as well as after IFN treatment, the appearance of anti-islet cell antibodies has been shown, but its interrelationship with the development of disease is uncertain. While being treated with IFN for chronic hepatitis C, the finding of non-organ specific antibodies at baseline can increase the likelihood of the development of autoimmune hepatitis. However, their presence does not constitute an absolute contraindication to the treatment, except in case of high titre. Other disorders, such as a lupus erythematosus-like syndrome, haemolytic anaemia, and immune-mediated thrombocytopenia have been reported. In conclusion, although the presence of auto-antibodies is considered to be an epiphenomenon without pathogenic significance in most patients suffering from chronic hepatitis C, it poses a problem when they need to be treated with IFN. This antiviral drug can induce or exacerbate a multitude of autoimmune-related disorders, however, clinically overt immune-mediated diseases are rare and affect a subset of subjects who have an underlying autoimmune diathesis."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15756146
Here is an article on testing for autoantibodies (the article is 4-5 pages long):
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/autoantibodies
The ANA blood test is one test used:
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/ana/tab/test
The ENA is another more specific test:
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/ena-panel/tab/test
And the Complement test:
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/complement-levels/tab/test
Also the Anticentromere Antibody test:
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/anticentromere-antibody/tab/test
And the Anti-double-stranded DNA, IgG:
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/anti-dsdna/tab/test