My lay-person thinking has been that the interferon does stimulate the immune system to charge out and kill the viruses but our bodies can't necessarily keep up the white blood cell production to keep up with the constant call to arms brought on by the interferon. Thus our WBCs go low but they are still being continually called out to fight.

Interferon produces some of the symptoms of immune system activation like fever and muscle aches and I had those symptoms with each and every shot and, in fact, for 4 weeks after treatment ended I still had the weekend fevers from lingering interferon. I also had enlarged lymph nodes - another sign of immune activation.

I read some time back that the medical community has identified some marker in the body that makes it more likely that interferon will work. Some people have this marker and some don't. If they figure out a good way to test for this marker it might be a huge breakthrough because it would help keep those without the marker from having to go through the agony of treatment without success. If they know ahead of time that they don't have this marker, they can spare themselves an unsuccessful treatment...at least until the better meds are here. I can't remember what this marker is called though.

interferon does stimulate the immune system
to produce CD4 T cells and CD8 T cells. but what happen
our immune system get so wound up
to do that it forgets to make other type's of T cell.
Like T cell to fight bacteria infection, fugues and
parasites.

http://aids.about.com/od/newlydiagnosed/qt/cd4.htm
http://www.thebody.com/content/art1788.html

Good info all!

My understanding and is certainly not technical, is the reason for the combo drug to break down or weaken the immune system by one drug so the other can attack the virus.......

I pretty much got the same answer as Marty. The Riba knocks down our immune system to keep it from attacking the interferon so it can kill the virus.

yep, I agree with Marty and Lyn. I cant even begin to understand the tecnology or chemica breakdown how it works.

yeah what cindy said.......

my c3to attacks my dy4e......but only if my sdff5t is low enough to circle my 7fdc3........
if it all works i will dial BR549 but if it dont i'm dialing 911.....

Aways call BR549 Marty. lol Thats funny cause I know who BR549 connects to! lol