Re: Factoids on the US HCV reservoir
Pool of chronically infected individuals: your 3.8M number is within the range of 3.2-4.0M from credible sources. 1.0-1.2M of these individuals are thought to be diagnosed.
New chronic infections per year: your 25K number is spot on, IMO.
New treatments per year: 71K, according to a 2007 DataMonitor report, which is within round-off error from your 75K figure.
>1) Right now we are NOT curing patients very significantly faster than newly infected patients are entering the pool<
71K treatments and a somewhat optimistic 40% cure rate gives 28.4K cures. Using what is IMO a more realistic 35% cure rate (treatment in the real world is not as effective as in the clinical trials cited in the ifn/ribavirin labels) gives ~25K cures per year, implying that the US HCV reservoir is close to a steady-state equilibrium.
>2) The pool is becoming enriched with treatment resistant - at a substantial, but not huge, rate.<
The size of the treatment-failure pool in 2007 was 250-400K individuals. The wide range may be due to variability in the definition.
Nice number-crunching job, Clark. Regards, Dew
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