I am a 57-year-old white American male infected with Hepatitis C. I am involved in a controlled medical research study by Roche Pharmaceuticals of an experimental Polymerase Inhibitor (RO5024048 also known as RG7128) drug therapy for the virus. This document is the story of my illness and the experience of treatment. My lovely and pretty damn wonderful wife will be contributing her take on the experience as well.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A Brief Note About Caffeine

The side effect that is most acute is the reaction of the meds with caffeine. I don’t know which one it is, whether it is the Interferon, the Ribavirin or the RG7128 aka RO5024048. What I do know is that I have had to cut my caffeine intake to near zero.

I was never a coffee drinker. It always made me jittery and I never liked the taste. I never like tea much either, the taste was not compelling. The caffeine I took in was all in the form of caffeinated sodas. Sometimes several of them a day. Then as I got older, I had to cut down to nothing caffeinated after about 2:30 in the afternoon, as I would be awake at nights if I had any later than that.
Several years ago, I trained myself into the habit of having a glass of green tea in the mornings at breakfast and that became my primary intake method, along with a soda or two during the day.

As soon as I started the study, I had to cut out all caffeinated sodas. If I had so much as a diet Dr. Pepper, I would get jittery and have the attention span of a gnat. Then I started to cut down the size of my Green Tea in the morning. If I had a full glass – about 10 ounces, I could definitely feel the effects and not in a pleasant and stimulating way. So, it was a small cup of tea in the mornings and then nothing the rest of the day. I still noticed some effects though, and realized that I was going to have to cut out chocolate as well.

Fine, the fatigue, itching, weakness, shortness of breath, irritability and insomnia were all things you can fight your way through, but NO CHOCOLATE, that’s just mean.
And I’m weak, so I am not going to get rid of it entirely, but I have cut way back. It all seems to be helping and I’m more calm and less irritable, but it is not something I read about in the discussions of either the Standard of Care treatment or the experimental drugs.

So be aware, it might help you a great deal to cut way down on your caffeine and anything that helps get through this is something to consider.

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