Interleukin 33 (IL-33) is a cytokine belonging to the IL-1 superfamily. Soluble ST2 (sST2) binds to IL-33 and by functioning as trap receptor inhibits signal sending to Th2 via transmembrane ST2. Because Th2-type cytokines play an important role in fibrosis, the aim of this study is to determine whether sST2 can be used as a marker of fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients or not.The st...

The efficacy of interferon α (IFNα) therapy for chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients is about 40% and often associates with adverse side-effects, thus identification of an easy accessible biomarker that can predict the outcome of IFNα treatment for individual CHB patients would be greatly helpful. Recent reports by us and others show that microRNAs encoded by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) were rea...

Staging fibrosis is crucial for the prognosis and to determine the rapid need of treatment in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and C (CHC). The expression of 13 fibrosis-related microRNAs (miRNAs) (miR-20a, miR-21, miR-27a, miR-27b, miR-29a, miR-29c, miR-92a, miR-122, miR-146a, miR-155, miR-221, miR-222, and miR-224) was analyzed in 194 serums and 177 liver biopsies of patients with eith...

Maintaining an appropriate concentration of dissolved oxygen in aqueous solution is critical for efficient operation of a bioreactor, requiring sophisticated engineering design and a system of regulation to maximize oxygen transfer from the injected air bubbles to the cells. Bacterial hemoglobins are oxygen-binding proteins that transfer oxygen from the environment to metabolic processes and al...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Quantification of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) is an emerging serologic test and may be useful for identifying treatment strategies for chronic hepatitis B (CHB). This study aimed to evaluate HBsAg titers during the natural course of CHB and identify correlations between HBsAg titers and hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA concentrations across different CHB phases measured using...

INTRODUCTION Third degree or complete heart block (CHB) is a medical emergency and usually requires permanent pacemaker placement. CHB can be caused by cardiac ischemia or non-ischemic conditions such as infiltrative diseases or fibrosis. The purpose of this study is to identify the baseline clinical characteristics associated with ischemic versus non-ischemic causes of complete heart block and...

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is the most common chronic liver disease resulting from viral infection and has become a serious threat to human health. Each year, about 1.2 million people in the world die from diseases caused by chronic infection of hepatitis B virus. The genetic polymorphism is significantly associated with the susceptibility to chronic hepatitis B. Genome-wide association study wa...

This paper studies the response of the nominal exchange rate to monetary shocks in an economy with consumption home bias (CHB) and sticky wages. The importance of accounting for the exchange rate with CHB are twofold. CHB is a consequence of the small open economy assumption when outputs are specialized and fluctuations in the relative price of traded goods generate deviations from purchasing p...

this paper presents novel active filter for mitigation electromagnetic interference (emi) and other adverse effects of pulse width modulation (pwm) inverter-fed ac motor system. an active filter proposed and devised for this system is characterized by sophisticated connection of two small separate filters, capable of mitigating all the adverse effects. this paper provides high frequency models ...