treatments

[shaker52]

are there any other treatments besides the interferon that anyone knows about?

[Marcia2202]

Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your experience with us Joe. It is very important that people get to know that one CAN get reinfected and that there is no immunity, even to the same genotype.

I'm so sorry that you had to go through this, mainly because of misleading information about reinfection.

Wishing you a big fat SVR

[jdwithhcv]

Hi Joey, and welcome to the forum.  Thanks for your input on this.  What an ordeal you've had!  WIshing you good health and a glorious Fourth!

jd

[Joey_M]

Interesting thread here. I have some real world experience with re-infection. Had GT 1a and treated for 48 weeks in 2004 and was SVR for 3 years. Was reinfected with GT 3a about a year ago and almost done with 24 weeks of tx (cleared at week 4). I belong to a coninfected (HIV / HCV) support group in San Francisco and several people have been reinfected with the same GT.

It is tragic because many doctors (including mine) said it was not likely to contact the virus through sex (yes, sex between men has a much higher risk for HCV). I also had heard some of the misinformation about going through tx would somehow protect you from reinfection and guess i wanted to believe it. I have been reading more and more on reinfection in the IV drug use & gay/HIV communities - at least word is getting out there now.

[orphanedhawk]

Belief is a powerful thing.

Personally, I've decided to believe the coffee research stating 5 or more cups per day will stop HCV replication.

I'm up to 4 and pushing for more.

[medicmommy]

Here's a thought...20% of individuals who contract Hep C actually fight it off and gain natural resistance to it...This doesn't mean they can't get it again, but it does mean their bodies will recognize it and come to the defense sooner.  If there was a way to gain a true immunity against a genotype, this would be the most likely way, don't you think? Measles and chicken pox usually whack an individual with a strong exposure, infect them, their bodies recognize the invasion, and wha-la, antibodies and immunities develop. Those that only get a light case of either virus may or may not gain the immunities and may be reinfected.
The same goes with the flu vaccine. Less than 60 percent gain protection from the most current flu strains when inoculated, and 20% of those have only partial resistance. Health care workers that have direct contact with the ill public usually develop natural immunities strong enough to reach out and kill small children! (As a Paramedic, I include myself in this category.) It was 3 1/2 months after I finished treatment that I was able to return to work (my neutrophils took a bit to recover) and within the first month, I caught a cold. After another following that one, my immune system seemed to remember what to do and I have been exposed to all manners of yuck since then, including the N1H1 flu bug, and have remained well. Prior to treatment, the Hep C was dragging me down with chronic fatigue, making it near- impossible to work 24 hour shifts. Now, I can outpace the 20-yr-olds again! In some people, I believe the Interferon leaves the system hyper-activated and creates an auto-immune response that causes further problems, but in most, when the artificially-hyped interferon levels relax after finishing treatment, the natural interferon/ immune response system will slowly kick in, possibly being stimulated into action by a mild virus or infection...~MM

[Marcia2202]

Dunno why, but this song just popped into my mind, can't remember who sang it

.....it's monkey see and monkey do.... that's all it is.... peaches

Anyway, I think we definitely need to set the records straight and proclaim that there is NO immunity to hep C. No matter how one got it or cleared it.