We report a case of type 1 diabetes mellitus during pegylated interferon and ribavirin treatment for chronic hepatitis C, in a young man previously diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and vitiligo. The diabetes mellitus occurred during the 12th month of therapy and the cessation of interferon was necessary. Besides anti-islet autoantibodies our patient had also anti-insulin receptor autoanti...

Endogenous opioids participate in growth regulation. Liver regeneration relates to growth. Thus, we explored the expression of methionine enkephalin and of the delta opioid receptor 1 immunoreactivities with a polyclonal rabbit antibody in deparaffinized liver of patients with chronic liver disease. Fifteen of a total of fifty-eight samples expressed both opioid receptor and methionine enkephal...

Streptococcus pneumoniae infection is a leading cause of bacterial pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis and is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Type I interferon (IFN-I), whose contribution to antiviral and intracellular bacterial immunity is well established, is also elicited during pneumococcal infection, yet its functional significance is not well defined. Here, we show that IFN-I p...

The orphan receptor CRF2-4 is a member of the class II cytokine receptor family (CRF2), which includes the interferon receptors, the interleukin (IL) 10 receptor, and tissue factor. CRFB4, the gene encoding CRF2-4, is located within a gene cluster on human chromosome 21 that comprises three interferon receptor subunits. To elucidate the role of CRF2-4, we disrupted the CRFB4 gene in mice by mea...

Both genetic and environmental interactions affect systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) development and pathogenesis. One known genetic factor associated with lupus is a haplotype of the interferon regulatory factor 5 (IRF5) gene. Analysis of global gene expression microarray data using gene set enrichment analysis identified multiple interferon- and inflammation-related gene sets significantly o...

Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) recognizes viral double-stranded RNA. It stimulates pro-inflammatory cytokine and interferon production. Here we reported the expression of a novel isoform of TLR3 in human astrocyte cell lines whose message is generated by alternative splicing. The isoform represents the N-terminus of the protein. It lacks many of the leucine-rich repeat domains, the transmembrane d...

Microglia is one of the first innate immune components. These cells account about 5 to 10% of the entire adult brain cells and are activated by trauma. Complex-mediated inflammatory responses occur through cellular and molecular events during and after the traumatic brain injury (TBI). In-lesion area astrocytes, microglia, and damaged neurons begin to secrete cytokines and chemokines. Microglia...

aim : the objective of this study was to estimate the average cost of diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis c among patients based on their treatment regime, during the one course of treatment and six-month after stopping that. background : hepatitis c virus (hcv) infection is a major cause of liver-related morbidity and mortality worldwide and a major public health problem. patients and methods...