Can hepatitis c be cured?

Can hep C be cured or just treated? and do you have to have the treatment immediately for it to work? what if you have had the disease for at least 5 years? is it ever too late to get treatment?

Hi Ann,
Good news! Hepatitis C has been cured among some people.
There is a combination therapy that involves taking an oral medication (ribavirin) as well as an intravenous infusion of another (interferon).

The course is for 6 months and cures have been recored amongst 50% of patients on this therapy. There are side effects from this regime such as fatigue, depression, anemia and flu-like symptoms.

It's never too late to initiate therapy.

No cure for hepatitis unfortunately.

No.. Just treated.

no cure for it I m afraid

No it is a chronic disease, like diabetes, and can be managed medically. You should get vaccinated for hepA and B and see a doctor regularly. Avoid liver toxic medicines and be weary of your volume status. No more alcohol, none.
Edit:Yeah, Bubba is right and my initial response was incomplete. The treatment as listed has a ton of contraindications but if you're truly symptomatic but otherwise healthy (or at least have your other health problems controlled) it probably is worth checking with a GI/liver specialist to see about initiating therapy.

I heard a commercial on the radio saying it can be cured. I think it was a commercial for the book Natural Cures THEY Don't Want You to Know About, or something like that. I got the weight loss book from that book series, just to see what it said, and it was really, really funny. I'm not sure how effective those books are for anything other than laughs, but if you have hep C, you're probably willing to try anything.

I have had hep c for 10 years, with the complication of cirrhosis, no cure, treatment is nasty with interferon, and not a cure,. the best treatment that I have had is to abstain from alcohol / drugs. Even a liver transplant is no guarantee that you'll get better. Sometimes we just have to do our best to "roll with the punches". Good Luck, Do the best that you can on your stay here in this world. Sleep when you need to, exercise and try your best to keep a positive attitude, and that doesn't come easy sometimes. Especially when you feel like sh*#..i..# t..

Treatment is available with a drug combination of ribavirin and interferon, which are typically administered for 6 months to a year depending on the response and subtype of virus. The drugs have a lot of side effects and not everyone can take them. The overall chance for cure is about 50-80 per cent again depending on the virus subtype. Treatment can be undertaken at any time as there is active infection in the liver.

Bubba is correct, everyone else isn't.

It is possible in a certain percentage of cases for Hep C to be cured. The chance of successful treatment (cure) depends on the strain of Hep C , the age of the person, their overall general health, degree of liver damage when starting treatment, HCV viral load when starting treatment, whether or not the person is a smoker, and prior treatment for Hep C.

But Hep C can be cured. The treament is similar to cancer chemo and can be very hard to handle. People with Hep C only really have one shot at a cure. Once a person has started treatment, if they stop prematurely (for whatever reason) the chance of success with future treatments plummets. In Canada, the government will pay for one course of Hep C treatment, but will not cover (in most cases) a 2nd treatment because of the poor chance at success.

Well, my husband and I have been to many classes to educate us on hep c. He just started treatment 3 weeks ago. But what we have been told many times is that even though the treatment may bring your viral load down to 0, you still are not cured, because the virus will always be in your body no matter what you do. Just like the chicken pox virus. It stays in your spine or somewhere all your life, even though you have been over the chicken pox for decades. Later it can cause shingles. You can never give blood after being treated for hep c, either.