Hepatitis B virus (HBV) covalently closed circular (CCC) DNA is the source of HBV transcripts and persistence in chronically infected patients. The novel aspect of this study was to determine the effect of RNA interference (RNAi) on HBV CCC DNA when administered prior to establishment of HBV replication or during chronic HBV infection. HBV replication was initiated in HepG2 cells by transductio...

BACKGROUND Collateral growth in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) is highly heterogeneous. Although multiple factors are thought to play a role in collateral development, the contribution of genetic factors to coronary collateral circulation (CCC) is largely unknown. The goal of this study was to assess whether functional single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes involved in vas...

Clear cell adenocarcinoma (CCC) of the ovary accounts for 10% of epithelial ovarian cancer and is a distinct entity from other epithelial ovarian carcinomas. It arises from the endometriosis. CCC has specific biological and clinical behavior. Compared with other histological types, CCC shows a chemoresistant phenotype, which leads to poorer prognosis. Thus, development of new target-based thera...

PURPOSE To compare the anterior lens capsulotomy edge tear strength created by manual continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis (CCC), femtosecond laser capsulotomy (FSLC), and a new automated precision pulse capsulotomy (PPC) device. DESIGN A 3-arm study in paired human cadaver eyes. PARTICIPANTS A total of 44 eye specimens from 22 donors in the United States. METHODS Capsulotomy was performe...

BACKGROUND Compassion and collaborative practice are individually associated with high quality healthcare. When combined in a compassionate collaborative care (CCC) practice framework, they are reported to improve health, strengthen care provision, and control health costs. Little is known about how to integrate and measure CCC, yet it is fundamentally applied in palliative and end-of-life care...

Several clinical trials to establish standard treatment modality for ovarian cancers included a high abundance of patients with serous histologic tumors, which were quite sensitive to platinum-based chemotherapy. On the other hand, ovarian tumor with rare histologic subtypes such as clear cell or mucinous tumors have been recognized to show chemo-resistant phenotype, leading to poorer prognosis...

Two concepts for the transmission with a high power capacity using HVDC technology are analysed in this paper. The technology of Capacitor Commutated Converters (CCC) is presented and the design of two system models is described. Their steady-state as well as transient performance is presented and the CCC is compared to the conventional HVDC transmission. The advantages of the CCC for high powe...

it is suggested that cultivars of wheat (triticum aestivum l.) with regulated growth and development would be able to produce higher yields under water-limited conditions, which is crucial in future food production. water use efficiency (wue) is worthy of exploration in this regard. in this study, the effects of nitrogen fertilizer levels (0, 40 and 80 kg nha-1) and a plant growth retardant (ch...

INTRODUCTION Educational milestones are now used to assess the developmental progress of all U.S. graduate medical residents during training. Twice annually, each program's Clinical Competency Committee (CCC) makes these determinations and reports its findings to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The ideal way to conduct the CCC is not known. After finding that d...

OBJECTIVE Identifying agreement between data for estimating maximum oxygen uptake obtained by a fitness test and the Polar S810 heart rate monitor. METHODS This was an observational agreement study comparing two methods for estimating VO(2max) (simultaneously and independently). Two protocols were applied to 46 athletes from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia who had been trained in enduran...