My wife is suffering with the HCV genotype 3B since 2005. Her ALt is consistently normal since tht time and the most recent ultra sound detected no liver disease except showing fatty liver. I want to what is chance of removing the virus by the use of interferon or pegasus. Pegasus is very expensive. Kindly tell should she start the treatment or not since all the tests are normal except PCR is showing a virul load of 126,070 IU/ml. Thanking you in advance and waiting for your reply. Syed Farid Ahmad

Hepatitis C genotype 3 with a low viral load - your wife is a great treatment candidate! Her chance of responding is terrific.

But yes this treatment is very expensive. There is some European data suggesting that treatment for 12 to 16 weeks is also effective. I would consider short course treatment if your wife's viral load clears after four full weeks of treatment (check her HCV RNA just prior to the fifth injection). If suppressed with a sensitive HCV RNA assay (less than 50 copies) I would consider short course therapy since the chance of a good outcome is high and this would cost much less money.

Her fatty liver will probably improve as well with treatment since genotype 3 is strongly associated with fat. However, viral clearance leads to reversal of fatty liver in the vast majority of patients.

I hope this is helpful.