What Is a Sustained Virologic Response or “SVR”?
What Is a Sustained Virologic Response or “SVR”?Answer: SVR is the closest you’ll get to “a cure” for hepatitis. Sustained virologic response, or SVR, is the goal of hepatitis C treatment. Conventional treatment (a combination of interferon and ribavirin) doesn’t necessarily eliminate the hepatitis C virus from your liver. It can, however, suppress the virus to undetectable levels for an extended period of time. In clinical language, this is called a “sustained virologic response,” or sustained response. It means that during the six months after you complete treatment, there is no detectable hepatitis C virus in your blood. SVR is a good thing. Studies have shown that with a six-month SVR (which means no detectable virus in your blood for six months after finishing treatment), relapse occurred in only 1-2% of patients. So, for every 100 people who finished treatment and attained SVR, the virus will return in only 2 of them. However, for these people, the virus never really left. The me
