Finding out about hep C will help you plan for the future. Our Hep C Action Newsletter Program can help guide you through testing and treatment.
What Is Successful Treatment?
Combination therapy using pegylated interferon and ribavirin can get rid of the virus in up to 5 out of 10 persons with genotype 1 and in up to 8 out of 10 persons with genotype 2 and 3.
You and your doctor will be looking to achieve these goals through your treatment: virologic response and histologic response.
- Virologic response is the more common way to look at hep C treatment success. To measure virologic response, doctors use a blood test to measure how much hep C virus is in the blood (this is also known as your “viral load”). The best virologic response would be a “sustained virologic response,” which simply means that the virus remains undetectable in your blood 6 months or more after you complete hep C therapy. Such a result is very good news: in studies that followed patients for 2 to 3 years after their sustained virologic response, very few relapsed (had a recurrence of infection) after this point.
- Histologic response, another way to evaluate hep C therapy, looks to see if liver inflammation has gone down. Therapy may help your liver by reducing inflammation.
Patients may have both of these responses or may have a histologic response even if they continue to carry the virus in their blood.
Read Patient Stories for more about the variety of experiences people have with hep C diagnosis and treatment.
- Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) is an enzyme that is normally found in the liver cells and in the blood. An increase in ALT levels indicates liver damage. However, a single ALT test will not reveal the severity of liver damage. Also, about 40% of people with chronic hep C do not have elevated ALT levels. So, although it is often tested and can be useful in many situations, your ALT level alone is not sufficient to determine the progression of your condition.
