SunMoonsStars
Senior Member
- Messages
- 159
HiMy experience is i noticed a positive effect from AVs after 3 months and about 6 months to confirm they were indeed helping but not cured. Ive been on famvir since 2009 and had a short stint on valtrex which didnt help and tried combining it with famvir, it may have helped. Also did 18months on famvir/valcyte that was positive.
But it has been up and down, as i have stopped avs for short periods of time to see if i could hold my improvements. Ive lasted as short as a few days upto a couple of months, which i think i did once.
A few theories i believe with my situation is that the viruses are a very low activity when doing well to very high activity when crashing, rarely dormant. I believe the avs dont stop these viruses from being active and feasting on its host but they stop the virus replicating and over time the viral load drops as the virus naturally die off and no new viruses are made. I believe thats why it can take along time to put these viruses to sleep, as in years. And maybe never truly knock the virus out.
I dont believe medicine can really detect an active infection unless its brand new first time infection or it is very overt and you are close to or in septic shock, that they will detect viruses in blood or cerebral spinal fluid. I think these viruses are sitting in the nervous system and occassionally small amounts of virus enter the blood stream to locate elsewhere.
I did use arvs for awhile and they would help for short lengths of time, so stopping and restarting would bring back some improvement . My experience with arvs i believe were through its ant inflammatory action which would decrease with continued use until i took a break from them.
Im guessing but about 2 yrs ago i stopped famvir, so 8 yrs on avs, within days had a shingles infection which reoccurred several times in varying degrees even while on avs but not as severe. Id like to try stopping avs again but very reluctant as im doing quite well.
What viruses was i dealing with? cfs onset cmv/vzv/ebv within several months of each other, tests over 12 months later were totally negative to ebv ie no igg life long titres, strange? Several years after onset i had 1 cmv igg titre level test that showed cmv titres could be high enough to be an active infection and was unable to get further tests. Then multiple vzv/shingles episodes . It could be any combination of the above???
Chicken or the egg if the infection came first or the immune dysfunction??
What are the levels of CMV IGG that warrant it to be reactivated ? I can’t find this info anywhere. My IGG is about 20 and I heard 15 and higher warrants highly positive. But just read that on old thread of patient mentioning that cut off.