The aim of the present study was to compare serum levels of soluble forms of interleukin-2 receptor, CD4 and CD8, released by lymphocytes during activation ofthe immune system, in patients with histologically verified chronic active hepatitis associated to hepatitis C virus infection, with those in healthy subjects. Significantly higher levels of soluble IL-2R and soluble CD8 were found in pati...

The majority of persons currently treated for chronic hepatitis B require long-term or lifelong therapy. New inhibitors of hepatitis B virus entry, replication, assembly, or secretion and immune modulatory therapies are in development. The introduction of these novel compounds for chronic hepatitis B necessitates a standardized appraisal of the efficacy and safety of these treatments and defini...

Communication between the immune system and metabolic components can be exemplified by the process of heme catabolism. The immunomodulatory functions of the enzymes, substrates and active products related to catabolism of the heme group have been extensively studied. Bilirubin (BR), the final breakdown product of heme, is primarily considered to be a toxic waste product but has recently been co...

HEMATOPOIETIC CELL transplantation (HCT) is performed annually in over 30,000 patients worldwide for a range of underlying disorders including hematologic malignancy, severe aplastic anemia, solid tumors, and genetic diseases.1 While the risk of acquiring hepatitis virus infection from transfusion of blood products is now extremely low, it is not uncommon for patients to come to transplantation...

INTRODUCTION The emergence of hepatic injury in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection during highly active therapy presents a diagnostic dilemma. It may represent treatment side effects or autoimmune disorders, such as autoimmune hepatitis, emerging during immune restoration. CASE PRESENTATION We present the case of a 42-year-old African-American woman with human immunodeficien...

Fulminant hepatitis is a severe liver disease resulting in hepatocyte necrosis. Galectin‑9 (Gal‑9) is a tandem‑repeat‑type galectin that has been evaluated as a potential therapeutic agent for various diseases that regulate the host immune system. Concanavalin A (ConA) injection into mice results in serious, immune‑mediated liver injury similar to human viral, autoimmune and fulminant hepatitis...

OBJECTIVE To review management of incidents involving exposure to blood reported to an occupational health unit. DESIGN Analysis of all reported incidents from January 1989 to June 1991. SETTING London teaching hospital. SUBJECTS 447 health care workers and students. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Immunisation against hepatitis B virus before exposure, proportion of known source patients tested ...

Hepatitis B virus splice-generated protein (HBSP), encoded by a spliced hepatitis B virus RNA, was recently identified in liver biopsy specimens from patients with chronic active hepatitis B. We investigated the possible generation of immunogenic peptides by the processing of this protein in vivo. We identified a panel of potential epitopes in HBSP by using predictive computational algorithms f...

Canine inflammatory liver disease – Lecture I Chronic active hepatitis (CAH) is the descriptive diagnostic terminology for the an ongoing inflammatory disease of the liver in dogs. This is thought to result predominantly from a complex immune mediated pathogenesis with concurrent factors relating to the initiation and severity of the disease. A similar/overlapping pathophysiologic process is hy...

Natural killer (NK) cells are traditionally regarded as first-line effectors of the innate immune response, but they also have a distinct role in chronic infection. Here, we review the role of NK cells against hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV), two agents that cause acute and chronic hepatitis in humans. Interest in NK cells was initially sparked by genetic studies that demons...