Talk to a specialist about your Hep C.  The PCP is not capable of telling
you much, but probably is interested in seeing you complete treatment
successfully rather than fall victim to false cures that are routinely
advertised on the Internet.  As for the meanings of measurements, you may
want to dive into the following web source:

http://www.medicinenet.com/hepatitis_c/page6.htm

sorry to see you here, but under the circumstances, you may be in the right
place.

cactus jammies ------------------

I've already posted this info on sci.­med.­diseases.­hepatitis but
since discovered this place, so...

I'm a 60-year-old, caucasian male who just got diagnosed on Aug. 25th
(I live in the U.S.A.
So far, I know my AST was (on occasions 22 days apart) 24 & 27 and my
ALT was 20 and 34; I showed Reactive for Hep-C serum and, because of
that, had viral load tested (3,269,796 copies/ml) and HCV IU of 268,807

IU/ml.
The only indicator I can't find anything about is the "HCV IU"; what
does that mean? [I think my doc. confirmed that that's the qualitative
viral load test]
I understand the rest of the factors:
Basically liver seemingly o.k., virus present.
Oh, I'm Genotype 1a.
I have about four months to wait yet till I could get treatment (to
"stabilize" myself--I'm being treated for depression and I'm going into

Recovery) but even though I've done quite a bit of research, I don't
really know which way to go...
The Doctor said I might live out the viruses deadliness or, maybe,
not...
I'm resistant to treatment...
I haven't yet looked closely at "alternative" treatments...
I'm assuming (because the Doc said I'd need more tests before
treatment) they'll do a biopsy but haven't asked yet... [see note
below]
Any and all comments/advice welcome!!!
[since I wrote all that, I've seen my primary care doc., incurred his
displeasure because I'm reading up on my condition (asked what I could
take for pain while I'm on Citalopram because advil and aspirin are
contraindicated [he said I can take them] since they can cause internal
bleeding) and had him ask if I wanted to see a gastroenterologist. I
gleefully said, "Yes!" But, that's still in the future...
~ Alex

Greetings, Alex, and welcome to our little corner of usenet. Fwiw, smdh went
basically moribund this year; this is "the place to be" ;-)

You probably had two viral counts done, one more sensitive at the low end, the
other less sensitive but able to quantify across a much wider range. These are
generally referred to as "qualitative" and "quantitative" tests, respectively.
In your case, the specific tests used report their results using different
standards of measure.

"IU" means "International Units", and is an attempt to normalize the various
tests to a standard reference, but there are still those tests that report
viral copies.

Your ALT/AST look quite good for a hepper. Unfortunately that doesn't rule out
the possibility of significant liver disease, so the biopsy will be the key to
your current state.

I'm wondering what you mean specifically by "I'm resistant to treatment".
Perhaps you'd like to discuss that further here.

As for alternative treatments, imo there isn't such a thing. There's
palliative care, but that's not treating the disease. Beware of charlatans and
posers offering low-impact "alternatives" with no supportive data...

Cheers

/greyhackles