Those are sad numbers. I also got to zero in about the same time frame
you did. I still have 7+ months to go (I'm doing 72 weeks)...

I have no idea why the variance. Perhaps your own immune system,
perhaps a testing artifact...

What were your numbers before treatment? Are you trying to get into a
trial for one of the new meds, and/or perhaps try Infergen combo
therapy+fluvastatin?

Fluvastatin piece (crappy, but...): http://tinyurl.com/3vjrfp

Infergen:

http://hepatitisdoctor.com/infergen.htm

http://www.infergen.com/1-For_Consumers/index.html

Lastly---not to blame the victim or anything like that, but as I very
much want my treatment to work, is there anything you feel you could
have done "better" while on treatment that might have improved the
outcome?

Hi, Rusky. Sorry to read about this.

Chronic HCV patients are host to a raging battle between immune system and
viral reproduction. Because the virus can change its coding to help avoid
recognition, it always holds the highest trump card. So, when its numbers
decline under immune system pressure, it uses mutation to regain its numbers
again, and once the virus gains the upper hand, it usually returns to its
"natural" coding, at which point the immune system starts winning. Repeat
indefinitely.

Thus viral load tests over time can produce highly varied results. I have read
that in untreated folks there can be a variability in viral load measurements
far exceeding 1 log. Indeed, pre-treatment, my VL over two measurements 6
months apart was 541K and 7M, using the same quantitative test.

That latter number scared me right into treatment, as one can imagine, even
while my bcld explained it wasn't an unusual occurrence, in light of the
mutation ability of the virus.

That viral mutation capability is a major cause of on-treatment viral
"breakthrough" - a phenomenon which has been significantly reduced by the
addition of Ribavirin to the Interferon, and the shift towards weight-based
dosing.

What we all hope for is a better set of combo drugs with higher success rates.
And hopefully something will be approved in a couple of years. In the mean
time, if you are considering re-treatment, switching to another Interferon and
extending treatment duration based on response rate is probably the way to go
- similar to the philosophy espoused by Dr. Ben Cecil and others. You may
simply have needed to stay on-tx for a few more months instead of following
the current standard of care for your genotype...

Cheers - and hang in there.

/greyhackles