BACKGROUND There are no data on neutralising antibodies to interferon-beta and its clinical implications in Chinese patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study were to investigate the prevalence of neutralising antibodies among Chinese patients with relapsing MS receiving interferon-beta (1a or 1b) and to study the association between neutralising antibodies...

Background and Aims: TGF-β is an effective cytokine in the viral replication cycle, which is also highly relevant to the pathogenesis of some viral infections. TGF-β induction by viral proteins is one of the ways to escape the virus from the immune system by inhibiting interferon signaling and other immune system factors.  In recent years, the role of TGF-β and its inhibitor...

A 40-amino-acid sequence located in the nonstructural 5A (NS5A) protein of hepatitis C virus genotype 1b (HCV-1b) was recently suggested to be the interferon sensitivity-determining region (ISDR), because HCV-1b strains with an ISDR amino acid sequence identical to that of the prototype strain HCV-J were found to be resistant to alpha interferon (IFN-alpha) whereas strains with amino acid subst...

Objective: Helicobacter pylori has a well-established role in the development of gastric cancer. In vitro studies reveal increased proliferation of the gastric mucosa in the presence of H. pylori infection. It has been also shown that production of some cytokines, such as interleukin-1 beta (IL-1b) is in...

The effect of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) gene expression on beta interferon (IFN-beta) expression was examined. We demonstrate that the HCMV immediate-early 2 (IE2) gene product IE86 can effectively block the induction of IFN-beta during HCMV infection. IE86 also efficiently blocked the induction of IFN-beta following Sendai virus infection, demonstrating that IE86's ability to block inductio...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Chronic hepatitis C is a slowly progressive disease and eventually causes hepatocellular carcinoma in many patients. Although interferon (IFN) therapy has been used for viral eradication, its success rate is only about 30%. In patients in whom it has failed (non-responders), there are several patterns of serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) values, and detection of serum HCV...

OBJECTIVES To determine levels of urinary myelin basic protein-like material (MBPLM) in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) openly treated with interferon beta-1b and to correlate these with clinical changes. BACKGROUND Levels of urinary MBPLM correlate with the presence of the progressive phase of MS and with the disease burden detected on T2-weighted, cranial magnetic resonance imaging. M...

A new formulation (NF) of subcutaneous (sc) interferon (IFN) β-1a was developed in an attempt to improve injection tolerability and immunogenicity. We compared antiviral and IFNβ-stimulated gene (ISG) activities of IFNβ-1a sc NF with IFNβ-1a sc original formulation and IFNβ-1b sc. When equivalent unit amounts were compared, the IFNβ formulations demonstrated similar antiviral activity and induc...