Dialysis patients remain a high-risk group for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The current diagnosis of HCV infection among dialysis patients includes serological assays and nucleic acid amplification technology (NAT) for assessing serum anti-HCV antibody and HCV viremia, respectively. However, current NAT techniques are expensive and labor-intensive and often lack standardization. An assay ...

To the Editor—The recent report of Yasui et al. [1] describing the dynamics of hepatitis C viremia following interferon-a administration contains some intriguing information regarding the ratio of core protein to hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA. First, there are very few laboratories that can measure the concentration of HCV core protein in serum. Thus, the information provided in table 1 of [1], g...

The signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) family proteins are transcription factors critical in mediating cytokine signaling. Among them, STAT3 is often constitutively phosphorylated and activated in human cancers and in transformed cell lines and is implicated in tumorigenesis. However, cause of the persistent activation of STAT3 in human tumor cells is largely unknown. The h...

Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection leads to increased oxidative stress in the liver. Hepatic antioxidant enzymes provide an important line of defense against oxidative injury. To understand the antioxidant responses of hepatocytes to different HCV proteins, we compared changes in antioxidative enzymes in HCV-core and HCV-nonstructural protein expressing hepatocyte cell lines. We found th...

Background: Core protein of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) has an important role in HCV self-replication, pathogenesis and carcinogenesis. Objectives: To identify the effect of core proteins from different quasispecies of HCV genotype 1b expressed in a HepG2 cell line on human gene expression profiles. Materials and Methods: Core protein eukrocytic expression plasmids (pEGFP-N1) containing differe...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects over 130 million people causing a worldwide epidemic of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular-carcinoma. Because current HCV treatments are only partially effective, molecular mechanisms involved in HCV propagation are actively being pursued as possible drug targets. Here, we report on a new macromolecular interaction between the HCV capsid core protein and the heli...

there are more than 350 million individuals with hepatitis c in the world. one of the important problems in vaccine project is development of effective and suitable adjuvant in human vaccines. at present research we applied human βhsp90 protein as an adjuvant in recombinant hcv vaccine design. the thermal vector of pgp1-2 was used for human heat shock protein 90 expression. this protein injecte...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is accompanied by the induction of oxidative stress, mediated by several virus proteins, the most prominent being the nucleocapsid protein (HCV core). Here, using the truncated forms of HCV core, we have delineated several mechanisms by which it induces the oxidative stress. The N-terminal 36 amino acids of HCV core induced TGF\(\upbeta\)1-dependent expression ...

Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is responsible for the development of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. HCV core protein plays not only a structural role in the virion morphogenesis by encapsidating a virus RNA genome but also a non-structural role in HCV-induced pathogenesis by blocking innate immunity. Especially, it has been shown to regulate JAK-STAT signaling pathway ...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with high percentage of chronicity which implies the ability of the virus to evade or modulate host cell immune system. Modulation of chemokines, such as RANTES may be part of the virus induced pathogenicity. We examined the effect of core and structural proteins of HCV on RANTES expression in two liver derived cell lines, HepG2 and Cha...