Harvoni and HepC in the Brain, Fantastic News

[Chip (OP)]

A close friend of mine with both HepC and Aids nearly died twice after being treated for his HepC in the brain using older treatments.

He is 100% cured and is enjoying good health now that his HepC is gone.

It only took 3 months of Harvoni treatment with no side effects. He is immensely pleased.

An amazing drug provided free in Oz.

[Jega]

Harvoni truly is a miracle drug. It a couple months it can cure nearly everyone with Genotype-1 which is most people! With insurance it can still be incredibly expensive in the United States. But without insurance it can be over $90,000!! Drug Tourism is a real thing since it can cost 1% of that in India.

http://www.fiercepharma.com/sales-and-marketing/hep-c-drug-tourism-has-begun-as-patients-seek-harvoni-sovaldi-overseas

[DeadCat]

Harvoni truly is a miracle drug. It a couple months it can cure nearly everyone with Genotype-1 which is most people! With insurance it can still be incredibly expensive in the United States. But without insurance it can be over $90,000!! Drug Tourism is a real thing since it can cost 1% of that in India.

http://www.fiercepharma.com/sales-and-marketing/hep-c-drug-tourism-has-begun-as-patients-seek-harvoni-sovaldi-overseas

There are some great things about the US but there is some unspeakable evils to it as well. The insurance companies and pharmaceuticals are simply putting profit ahead of lives. IIRC most people who contracted Hep-C are now past 50 and approaching Medicare age. So, if they spent the average of $94,000 to rid them of hep-c now will cost the insurance companies much more as these same people live into old age and their heath care costs rise aong with their years. But if they die of complications of Hep-C before they get into their 70's they will not only save the $94,000 but also all their covered health care expenses they will incur a s seniors for the rest of their lives.

I am so, so glad that although I did have hep-C that i was one of th elucky 30% who's body fought it off without medication. That old cure with interferon was supposed to be so hard on your body that you quaified for temporary disability while you were being treated and IIRC it took about a year. I had a fiend who did it in the 90's and he was barely functional the whole time.


Here is a blurb on Harvoni costs in the US:

$94,500
Harvoni cost in the US – $94,500 per treatment. If you are looking for cheap Harvoni price don't look at the US. In the United States the price of Harvoni is the highest in the world. With an average cost of $1,125 per Harvoni pill, it is one of the most expensive drugs on the market.

[Griffin]

That is awesome, now if harvoni was available to everyone then this world would be in a much better place. I was reading the other day how since most jails and prisons only have one electric hair clipper that a lot of inmates are actually catching hep c from it, and that there is no proper cleaning sprays for it that instantly kills aids, and hep but hep c lives longer outside the body then HIV so its a bigger threat in situations like those.

I remember everyone in my pod was giving me shit about not cutting my hair and looking like a school boy and shit I told them I wanted to look as white and innocent as possible since my hair wasn't long, but wasn't short either. Really I didn't want to catch hep C(probably being to much of a pussy germaphobe but hey I have bad enough luck as it is.) So i just kept making up excuses not to cut it, and to use the straight razor on my face. jails are so fucked.

dude in my pod cut his tongue in half like a lizard wit a blade from the shaving razor with Zero after care all his tatts were from prison I am surprised more poeple don't catch shit from doing stuff liek that. I have pierced my ears several times and my noses with clothing pins but that is as far as i have gone to shit like that.

This is kind of what my hair looked like (not me) maybe a tiny bit longer. so i wanted to look as innocent and schoolboyish as possible for the judge and didn't want the hepc infected electric razor near me.

[Chip (OP)]

noses ? I'll bet you smell great ! 

But seriously, that was a smart move by not sharing personal hygeine tools of any kind.

Oz is serious about stopping HepC, at all cost. This is a fantastic drug that is well tolerated.

[Dog Food]

Deadcat,. If you read this i got a question.  So you actually had a hep c exposure, got tested right after being exposed and it came back positive, then went and got tested agaim a few months or so later again, and it came back negative???

I was always kinda curious how people knew that they cleared hep c on their own, kinda figured theyd just never know they had it unless they got tested rigorously like the above paragraph.  If you had gotten it and got tested say a year later, youd just have came back negative.

I wonder if you were infected again, if you'd clear it on ur own everytime. Or if it had to be the exact same genotype and youd clear it again.  Its just weird how some can but they couldnt figure a cure for so long

[Chip (OP)]

They have the antibodies in their blood.

[DeadCat]

Deadcat,. If you read this i got a question.  So you actually had a hep c exposure, got tested right after being exposed and it came back positive, then went and got tested agaim a few months or so later again, and it came back negative???

I was always kinda curious how people knew that they cleared hep c on their own, kinda figured theyd just never know they had it unless they got tested rigorously like the above paragraph.  If you had gotten it and got tested say a year later, youd just have came back negative.

I wonder if you were infected again, if you'd clear it on ur own everytime. Or if it had to be the exact same genotype and youd clear it again.  Its just weird how some can but they couldnt figure a cure for so long

Not exactly. In  1982 I shared a nedle the first time I got high. Remember, this was before AIDS was even really a  thing. We we just starting the hear about "The Gay cancer in NYC and with some
haitaans also infected so not sharing needles wasn't as stressed as it later beacame. Hep-B was about the worst andmost likely diese you could get form sharing a rinsided needle with another user, because  as mentned above it is a "hardy virus" and can live 3 weeks in micro-droblets of water on a room temperature on countertops (or in needles)'"?˘ Hep C wasn't even a known virus.

Afrer I started showing symptoms (nausea, white stools, dark urine, etc, I wnt to a GP who was really cool. He asid he wasn't going to juge how I chose to enjoy my life but that hepatitis was a risk.  At that point in time the likely culprit was Heb B becasue Is hared needles (Hep as is usually food borne) but the blood tests came back as "Non-A, Non-B Non-Specific Hepatitis. Later they would identify specific different hep viruses including Hep-C and other letters for other strains.

Over the years I a had liver panels run and they all showed that my iver was functioning properly but I cleraly had the antibdies for Hep - C proving it is what I had hahd. One of my drug buddies had to have a liver replacement and still died from liver failure so I was either very lucky or di someting right.

When the new Harvoni tablet tratments became available and my insurance covered it i signed up to finally get rid of this diease that could eventually kill me despite not being sick for years. Befoe treament they again tested  and found antibodies which qualified me to being treatment. However, the last test they give you before starting treatment is to look for the actual virus itself and determine "Viral load, how many actual parts per million of the actual living virus you have so they can measure progress of treatment.

They took blood and about half an hour later, when i was expecting to get started takng the harvonie, the lead doctor came in and said, "We have some good news, we lookedf or the actual virus and could find none. It looks like your body has fought it off on it's own." 

For a minute I thought they were BS'ing me so insruance wouldn't have to pay the nearly $100,000 to cure this old dope fiend but hen she xplained that about 30% of people with Hep-c do in fact 'spontaneously resolve."  The antibodies linger on a which I believe provide lifelong imunnity for re-infection but the virus itself is gone.

For over 20 year I expected that one day, sooner or later I would die of some complication and now I was told that wasn't going tbe an issue . They gave me inoculations for Hep A and B so I am pretty well protected from the common Hep diseases from here on out.

I had NO IDEA that 30% of us cure ourelvles naturally. Although, once i new I had hepatitis I cut my drinking down to almost nothing, and didn't take any drugs that Ithought could hurt my lier, acetoiniphine in particular and maybe tht helped my body beat it.


Hope that answers your question.

[Dopeless Hopefiend]

Deadcat,. If you read this i got a question.  So you actually had a hep c exposure, got tested right after being exposed and it came back positive, then went and got tested agaim a few months or so later again, and it came back negative???

I was always kinda curious how people knew that they cleared hep c on their own, kinda figured theyd just never know they had it unless they got tested rigorously like the above paragraph.  If you had gotten it and got tested say a year later, youd just have came back negative.

I wonder if you were infected again, if you'd clear it on ur own everytime. Or if it had to be the exact same genotype and youd clear it again.  Its just weird how some can but they couldnt figure a cure for so long

I cleared it on my own as well. I tested positive  in 1998 and again when I was retested about a year later. When I got pregnant with my son in 2004 I let my ob-gyn know right away that I had Hep C because I was worried about the possibility of passing it to my baby. She ordered blood/viral lode tests and I came back negative. I think they actually called it "undetectable"  not negative, I'm not sure what the difference is though. The way the doctor explained it to me was that just because I had cleared the virus, I would only be immune to the same particular strain I was originally infected with. If I were exposed to any other strain I would be just as at risk as anyone else. She even said something to the effect of "Hep C is like Baskin & Robbins, 31 flavors."  I have another friend who tested positive for years, did a full round of interferon and still tested positive. 5 or so years later they were planning on doing Harvoni, retested her and she'd cleared it. I don't know how that happened.
I hope that Harvoni is made more accessible to more people in this country. I watched my husband die of liver cancer that was a direct result of long term untreated Hep C and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

[Dog Food]

Yeah, that answered it. Thanks.

I just always wondered how people would know they had it.  Then i guess when getting on a treatment program is a good time to find out you cleared it on your own. 

Like the reply avove this, be careful you dont get it again, cause you could get a different genotype that your body cant rid on its own.  Some are harder than others

[Esoteric Anhydride]

I had NO IDEA that 30% of us cure ourelvles naturally. Although, once i new I had hepatitis I cut my drinking down to almost nothing, and didn't take any drugs that Ithought could hurt my lier, acetoiniphine in particular and maybe tht helped my body beat it.

For a long time I'd heard the number of us that clear it on our own is about %15, maybe more people are clearing it these days.

I also seem to be one of the lucky few. I'm pretty sure I know exactly where and when I was initially exposed, and a friend who was with me at the time tested + for years afterwards, I cleared it easily but she didn't; I started coming up negative within a couple years, the only thing that happened to me was that my enzyme levels were off the charts for awhile, but at the time they weren't sure what it was -- this was in 1989. Since then though, I've had I think 3 tests showing an undetectable viral load.

Close call.

[Dopeless Hopefiend]

-- this was in 1989.

1989? I have no idea why, but I thought you were a youngster, lol. Like no more than 25 or so. I'm sure I just attributed a post someone else made to you or something.

[Chip (OP)]

i had a needle stick injury on my mate's syringe who had HepC but was treated for it using Intereron.

I assumed his lack of any viral load saved me from contracting it. Thank fuck.