Treatment of chronic hepatitis C with pegylated interferon-a and ribavirin is now adapted individually based on the virological response on treatment. This approach should improve the tolerability while maintaining or even improving in some patients the efficacy of antiviral therapy. Several new antiviral drugs are currently being evaluated in advanced clinical trials, with very promising resul...

AIM OF THE STUDY To assess the impact of international consensus conference guidelines on the attitude of Swiss specialists when facing the decision to treat chronic hepatitis C patients. METHODS Questionnaires focusing on the personal situation and treatment decisions were mailed to 165 patients who were newly diagnosed with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and enrolled into the Swiss Hepat...

Antiviral therapy for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is used before and after liver transplantation. The objective of this study was to determine the most cost-effective timing for pegylated interferon/ribavirin therapy in patients with advanced liver disease infected with genotype 1 HCV. A Markov model was constructed to compare treatment strategies: (1) no treatment, (2) a...

Since the release of amantadine in 1966, other agents designed to fight a diverse range of viral infections have been released. Part I of this two-part article focuses on agents used to manage hepatitis, cytomegalovirus, and herpes infections. In patients with chronic hepatitis B, interferon alfa-2b or lamivudine is the treatment of choice. Pegylated interferon alfa-2a or -2b, along with ribavi...

There is no consensus on the optimal antiviral regimen in the management of acute retinal necrosis, a disease caused by herpetic viruses with devastating consequences for the eye. The current gold standard is based on retrospective case series. Because the incidence of disease is low, few well-designed, randomized trials have evaluated treatment dosage and duration. Newer oral antiviral agents ...

Recent work has shown that the new antiviral acyclovir (acycloguanasine) is a highly effective antiviral drug against the herpes simplex virus."2 It acts mainly on virally infected cells by blocking viral particle formation before the particles pass through the nuclear membrane3 by means of inhibiting viral DNA polymerase after being converted by virally specific thymidine kinase.4 In tissue cu...

avicennia marina (avicenniaceae) is a species of mangrove tree used for treatment of small pox lesions in persian folk medicine. the antiviral activity of methanol, ethanol, water, chloroform and n-hexane extracts was evaluated against hiv-1 and hsv. methanol extract had the highest antiviral activity and the most polar fraction of this extract (fraction d) inhibited hsv with ti and si values o...