Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects an estimated 170 million persons worldwide, and 2 million persons in Japan. HCV is a major cause of chronic liver diseases, especially hepatocarcinogenesis, and the number of patients with HCV-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is increasing worldwide as well as in Japan. Most patients with acute hepatitis C develop chronic hepatitis. Spontaneous disappearanc...

Infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) has become the most important public health problem in Egypt. In Egypt, viral hepatitis along with infection with Schistosoma mansoni is the major cause of chronic liver disease and liver cirrhosis. Although HCV infection is highly prevalent in Egypt, very little information is available on the distribution of the different genotypes of HCV. Our aims in th...

Background and Aims: Natural killer T (NKT) cells have been suggested to play critical roles in a wide range of immune responses especially against hepatotropic pathogens such as hepatitis C virus (HCV). In  the  present  study,  we  investigated  the  status  of  NKT  cells  by producing interleukin-17 cytokine in  peripheral  bl...

Hepatitis C (HCV) is now the main cause of chronic hepatic disease, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Several extrahepatic diseases have been associated with chronic HCV infection, and in most cases appear to be directly related to the viral infection. Thyroid disorders are common in patients with chronic HCV. Some patients with chronic hepatitis C experience thyroid problems, and thyroid...

BACKGROUND & AIMS Despite the availability of effective therapies for hepatitis B (HBV) and C virus (HCV), only a minority of these patients receive treatment. We systematically reviewed published data on barriers to management for chronic HBV/HCV patients in Europe. METHODS Literature search to identify studies including adult patients with chronic HBV/HCV infection from European countries a...

BACKGROUND Previous reports have indicated that insulin resistance (IR) is associated with chronic hepatits C virus (HCV) infection. However, the correlations between IR, metabolic syndrome (MS), and serum HCV RNA levels are still controversial. The aim of this study was to determine the relationships between IR, MS, and HCV RNA in patients with chronic genotype 1 or 2 HCV infection. METHODS ...

BACKGROUND Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) confers increased risk for chronic renal disease, and numerous reports suggest an association with renal cell carcinoma (RCC), a cancer with rapidly rising global incidence. We sought to determine whether HCV infection confers an increased risk for developing RCC. METHODS With the use of administrative data from a large, integrated, an...

CD4+ Treg-cells (regulatory T-cells) probably contribute to the impaired virus-specific T-cell responses in chronic HCV (hepatitis C virus) infection; however, their antigen-specificity has remained elusive. In the present study, we analysed peripheral blood CD4+ Treg-cells in patients with chronic hepatitis C and subjects with self-limited HCV infection and characterized individual Treg-cell c...

conclusions the rvr is the strongest factor of svr and infection with hcv genotype 2 is significantly associated with rvr. neither biochemical and/or metabolic factors seem to exert influence on rvr. objectives the main aim of this study was to assess the strength of rvr, as a predictive factor of antiviral treatment response. patients and methods using univariate and multivariate analysis, we ...

INTRODUCTION Interleukin (IL)-18 is a well-known major proinflammatory cytokine with broad biological effects. The major immunomodulatory functions of IL-18 include enhancing T cell and natural killer cell cytotoxicity. Serum levels of this cytokine were shown to increase in chronic hepatitis C patients compared to non-infected healthy people. An association between IL-18 gene promoter polymorp...