BACKGROUND/AIMS To compare the effectiveness and side-effect profile of two doses of interferon alpha2b (IFNalpha2b) eye-drops (1 million international units (IU)/ml versus 3 million IU/ml) in the treatment of ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN). METHODS Retrospective case series. RESULTS Thirty-five eyes were identified over an 11-year period (1996-2007). Twenty-one eyes (19 patients) wit...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment is based on the association of pegylated alpha interferon (IFN-alpha) and ribavirin. To improve the level of sustained virological response to treatment, especially in patients infected with HCV genotype 1, new IFNs with improved efficacy and toxicity profiles may be developed. In this report, we show that, in the BM4-5 cell line harboring an HCV subgenomic rep...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C antiviral therapies have significant psychiatric side effects. It is therefore believed that they might exacerbate mental illness in patients with pre-existing psychiatric disorders, resulting in poor adherence and response to antiviral treatment. We aimed to assess adherence to treatment, virological outcomes and mental safety in psychiatric patients, compared with non-p...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES We compared the early cytogenetic response (CgR) to a combination of imatinib mesylate (Glivec, Novartis Pharma, Basel, Switzerland) and a pegylated form of human recombinant interferon-alpha2b (pegIFN-alpha2b, PegIntron, Schering Plough, Kenilworth, New Jersey, USA) with the relative risk, either according to Sokal's or Euro scoring systems. DESIGN AND METHODS Seven...

Certain genotypes of hepatitis C virus (HCV) respond less often than others to treatment with interferon (IFN). The mechanisms for this differential response are not known. In this report antiviral effects of IFN-alpha2b on translation were examined in a hepatic cell line using chimeric clones of internal ribosome entry site (IRES) sequences from six different HCV genotypes and the green fluore...

A randomized, controlled, double-masked clinical trial was conducted with a combination antiviral-antimediator treatment for experimental rhinovirus colds. In all, 150 healthy men and women (aged 18-51 years) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: intranasal interferon (IFN)-alpha2b (6 x 10(6) U every 12 h x 3) plus oral chlorpheniramine (12 mg extended release) and ibuprofen (400 mg) every 1...

BACKGROUND The standard model of hepatitis C virus (HCV) dynamics under high-dose daily interferon (IFN) therapy assumed that the drug effectiveness remains constant. However, for treatment with pegylated (PEG)-IFN-alpha2b dosed weekly, drug levels fall substantially and viral load rebounds have been observed toward the end of the weekly dosing interval, implying non-constant drug efficacy. M...

Genetic optimizations to achieve high-level production of three different proteins of medical importance for humans, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interferon alpha 2b (IFN-alpha2b), and single-chain antibody variable fragment (scFv-phOx), were investigated during high-cell-density cultivations of Escherichia coli. All three proteins were poorly expressed when put un...