alpha-interferon therapy has been approved for treatment of chronic hepatitis c and b. candidates for treatment are patients with well-compensated liver disease and histologic evidences of chronic hepatitis who have demonstrated abnormal aminotransferase levels for more than 6 months. from 30 patients with chronic hepatitis with diseases prolonged more than 6 months, we selected only 16 patient...

conclusions these findings indicated the association of the hbsag titer and serum ifnar2 in hbsag clearance in hepatitis b virus- infected patients. in consequence, immune mechanisms related to ifn-α/β signaling might be responsible in chb outcome. background loss of hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) in chronic hepatitis b (chb) infection is a favorable outcome. type i interferon (ifni) has a...

A unique sequence in the mouse genome which cross-hybridized to a cloned human interferon-beta 1 gene was detected by DNA blot analysis. Taking advantage of this, a cDNA library prepared from partially purified mRNA for mouse interferon-beta was screened using human interferon-beta 1 DNA as a probe. One of the positive clones, pM beta-3, contained a 680-base pair cDNA insert, whose base sequenc...

The interferon-beta promoter binding protein, IRF-2, is proteolytically processed during induction by double-stranded RNA to leave an N-terminal fragment that can still bind to DNA. An N-terminal fragment that corresponds to the induction-specific product has a higher affinity for the promoter and is a more potent repressor of interferon-beta transcription than the full-length precursor. The ki...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease involving oxidative stress (OS). This study was aimed at examination of the effect of melatonin supplementation on OS parameters, especially oxidative protein modifications of blood serum proteins, in MS patients. The study included 11 control subjects, 14 de novo diagnosed MS patients with the relapsing-remitting form of MS (RRMS), 36 patients with RRMS rec...

BACKGROUND Available data suggest that pregnancy exposure to interferon-beta might result in lower mean birth weight and preterm birth. OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of interferon-beta exposure during pregnancy on pregnancy outcomes in multiple sclerosis patients. METHODS We compared the pregnancy outcomes of women exposed to interferon-beta with pregnancies unexposed to disease-modifyi...

We have introduced the human beta-interferon gene with its promoter region into murine B-cell and fibroblast cell lines via a Moloney murine leukemia virus (M-MuLV) vector and have studied the inducible expression of the beta-interferon gene as a function of the various retroviral vector designs. By deleting the enhancer within the 3' viral long terminal repeat (LTR), inserting the human beta-i...