for Veterans and the Public

Patients who have never taken medications to treat their hepatitis C are called "treatment naïve."

For patients who have taken medications, there are 2 main types of response to treatment:

Sustained virological response

This means that the treatment worked while you were taking the medicine and continued to work even after you stopped taking it. Sustained virological response (SVR) means no virus is present in the blood 6 months after the medications have been stopped. Studies have shown that patients who achieve an SVR almost always have the virus undetectable (absent) for years, for as long as the studies have followed them.

• Rapid Virological Response
  

  At 4 weeks into treatment if the virus is undetectable or has dropped 2 logs then this is a Rapid Virological Response. It is very likely that if a patient has an RVR that they will also have an SVR.

• Early Virological Response
  

  At 12 weeks into treatment if the virus is undetectable or has dropped 2 logs then this is an Early Virological Response. It is very likely that if a patient has an RVR that they will also have an SVR

• End of Treatment Response
  

  At the end of treatment (usually 24 or 48 weeks depending on planned course) if the virus is undetectable then this is a End of Treatment Virological Response. After the End of Treatment response, treatment is stopped and virus is measured for the next 6 months for any evidence of relapse.

Relapse

The treatment worked to achieve no detectable virus while the medications were present, but after the drugs were stopped, the virus was found again in the bloodstream.. The medicine and your immune system were able to clear the virus for a time, but could not do so completely. When you stopped taking the medicine, the hepatitis C virus came back.

Nonresponse

The treatment did not remove (or clear) the virus from your blood by 24 weeks and if it was continued did not clear the virus by 48 weeks.