Fight off Hepatitis C

Good question from the Hepatitis C Newsgroup:

Q. Just curious if it's at all possible for your immune system to eradicate hep c? I haven't had tests done in a while (has to do with
insurance, etc.) Anyway I found out the last time I went in that I was fine on liver enzymes, they found no viral load, and I got a new piece of info which was that I had and no longer have Hep B. If I had the Hep B before the Hep c is there a chance i could've killed off the hep c and be fine, but still test positive for antibodies?

Yes, I'm really quiet ignorant on all this, please don't flame me.

A. Regardless of how you kill off live HCV virions, antibodies to the virus will likely persist. So you would be probably turn up positive for the standard first-order Hep-C test, which actually tests for antibodies, but negative for the viral load test, which actually tests for whole virions.

As to whether you may have cleared the HCV infection on your own: most folks that clear the virus do it before it has reached a chronic condition (ie: some time before 6 months to a year). It is apparently possible, but rare, to clear the virus once it has persisted in the body beyond that window.

The only way to accurately gauge where you are with HCV is to get a fresh viral load test.

I have never seen word one that suggests HBV infections have any positive
effect on an HCV infection. If you actually cleared your HCV, it wasn't
because you got co-infected with HBV...

Cheers

greyhackles