No way of really knowing. Assessment off the health of the liver such as liver fibrosis and liver function and other clinical presentations may help determined how long the virus may have been active.

Clay, as Kramer said there's no way to know. Viral load doesn't mean much, some people have relatively low counts with more advance liver damage than those with high levels.

Fibrosis stages won't tell you the story either. With some it advances fairly quickly, others have been infected for 30 years with mild to moderate damage.

I suspect it may be a combination of hereditary factors; coupled with overall health & consumption of toxic substances that determines the progression.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once.
:-)


Bob

Hey Clay -
I agree with the guys here - doesn't seem to be any way of REALLY knowing.
However, people like to talk about how liver enzyme levels are not a good indicator, and people can have Hep C for years with perfectly normal enzymes, etc...
That's true, but I think it gets repeated so much that people think it's "more true than it really is," to coin a silly phrase. For one reason or another, I've had my enzyme levels checked pretty regularly going back for years. When I was diagnosed, my hepatologist pulled them up, looked at them running consistently normal for years, and then suddenly spiking...and he was pretty comfortable looking at that (and some other blood readings) and guessing pretty confidently when I got it. His guess matched mine pretty well.
At this point I'll beg people not to jump on this too hard with their totally valid book of facts open...I know a variety of things can make a sudden enzyme spike happen to a person who's had HCV for years...but I'm just saying that enzyme levels get downplayed a little to much in my opinion.
And I'm no doctor, either!

Damn! For the last week, I've been constantly misspelling "too."
My next blood test will show that I'm short on "O"s.

Same story here. quit drinking in 93 due to HCV and liver enzymes were pretty well normal for years, so much so the thinking was HCV would never be a problem for me. The old school of thought was that if you went 20 years with no liver illness you would be just fine.
Well fast forward to 2007 and family Dr. says "hey it's been a few years, let's do a liver panel" and BANG enzymes were high and went on to further being Dx as cirrhotic.

So Kramer, were your enzyme levels high upon dx, and then went to normal after you quit drinking...or were they always normal until 2007?
Either way, your story seems to show that I'm wrong, and people should go with the seemingly prevailing wisdom that enzyme levels tell you almost nothing about when you got it.

The hep C virus was not even discovered until 1989. I went back and looked at old blood test from a hospital stay back in the 70's and found my enzymes were elevated then. It got to a point where it didn't matter how long I had it but how long it would take for me to kick its ass. I spent to much time worrying about how long. I could look back when I was eleven living with my a brother that was using IV drugs. At that time he gave me a home made tatto. There are other instances in my life that I can look back on and say, "Hey, was that the time?" Don't matter because you can't do nothing about it anyway...

So all will know my reason for asking: Being recently diagnosed with HCV, I think it is natural at this stage to wonder. But I also have read so much where people on here state they have had it since 1941 or for 22 years or whatever. I now can assume that when they say that then they are starting from the date which they were either diagnosed with liver disease or with HCV.

I can remember being told my enzymes were high in 85, but the doctor didn't seemed too concerned.

Still, that only tells me when I first had an irregular test result. Even if you take that to mean I was likely exposed by then, there's no way of knowing if I had it for 1 or 10 years before that test.

HCV since 1969. It was called non A non B until I was told I was HCV in 1993. When I drank my enzymes went up. When I abstained they went down so I stopped and maintained normal levels until my 2008 blood work showed the virus had become active on its own... very active!

HCV usually causes your ALT and AST values to be high, so if you can dig up lab test or blood-work results, you might find a clue in there.

Biopsy samples indicate the level of damage to your liver, but everyone progresses at different rates, so that's not a good indicator.

Some folks can pinpoint when it was; especially if they had a history of sharing needles or snorting cocaine through a shared straw. Best guess for mine was a small blood transfusion in 1985, before they started screening blood. The virus can live outside the body for 48-96 hours, so there's a very slim chance that someone left a little blood on a surface that you later touched with a cut on your hand.

I wondered about it too, but now you just have to focus on getting better. Good luck! :-)