CONTEXT Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a common blood-borne pathogen that relies heavily on nucleic acid testing for confirmation of infection. Nucleic acid tests are invaluable for the diagnosis of HCV infection and provide critical prognostic information for guiding treatment and measuring the response to antiviral therapy. OBJECTIVE To review the currently available molecular diagnostic tests ...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Relapse has been reported after stopping nucleos(t)ide (NUC) therapy in the majority of chronic HBeAg negative hepatitis patients. However, the ideal treatment duration of HBeAg negative chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is not well known. We investigated the frequency of relapse in HBeAg negative CHB patients receiving NUC therapy. METHODS The NUC therapy was discontinued at least 3 ...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) subtype 1b, which infects approximately 70% of Japanese carriers, is likely to be more eradicable by a telaprevir regimen than subtype 1a because of the higher genetic barrier of Val(36) and Arg(155) substitutions. The aims of this exploratory study were to evaluate the virological response and safety of 24-week oral administration of telaprevir alone in chronic HCV subt...

objectives analysis of ns5a polymorphisms in hcv genotype 1b pre-treatment serum samples from estonian patients and their effect on the treatment response. patients and methods twenty-nine complete ns5a sequences obtained from patients with chronic hcv-1b infection who had received combined therapy with pegifnα-2a/rbv were analyzed and compared with the prototype strain hcv-j. twelve patients a...

A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) upstream of interleukin (IL)28B was recently identified as an important predictor of the outcome of chronic hepatitis C patients treated with pegylated interferon plus ribavirin (PEG-IFN/RBV). The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the IL28B gene polymorphism (rs12979860) and virological response in chronic hepatitis C patients. B...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to determine the rate of sustained virological response (SVR) and various factors associated with response rates in chronic hepatitis C infected patients treated with interferon alpha and ribavirin combination therapy. METHODS A retrospective review of patients data collected at this Centre from 2001 to 2007 was performed. Out of 731 consecutive patients 4...

We aimed to determine whether neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) could be a predictor of antiviral response in chronic hepatitis C patients. A total of 602 consecutive patients (genotype 1, n = 263; genotype 2, n = 297; others/unknown, n = 42) receiving response-guided therapy with peginterferon plus ribavirin were recruited. NLR was related to clinical and virological features and to treatme...

AIMS To compare interferon monotherapy with its combination with lamivudine for hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive hepatitis B treatment. METHODS Two independent researchers identified pertinent randomized controlled trials. The trials were evaluated for methodological quality and heterogeneity. Rates of sustained virological and biochemical responses, and HBeAg clearance and seroconversi...

Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major public health problem, with perhaps 180 million people infected worldwide. A significant proportion of these will eventually develop clinical complications, such as cirrhosis, liver decompensation and hepatocellular carcinoma. Sustained virological response (SVR) to antiviral therapy is associated with improvement in liver histology and ...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is mainly hepatotropic; however, several reports document the presence of genomic viral RNA in extrahepatic sites including peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). In this study, the presence of HCV RNA was initially evaluated in the plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of 53 HCV-infected patients who were treated per protocol. PBMC-associated HCV RN...