BACKGROUND AND AIMS Rapid viral response (RVR) during antiviral treatment for hepatitis C virus (HCV) predicts sustained viral response (SVR). Recently, vitamin D levels have been associated with SVR. As sunlight is the most important source of vitamin D and shows seasonal variation, we evaluated the effect of season on viral kinetics during peginterferon/ribavirin-based therapy for HCV. METH...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Neutrophil count and magnitude of decrease from baseline are not correlated with infection rate in recipients of interferon-based therapy for hepatitis C (HCV). The association of neutropenia with viral response raises the potential dilemma of trying to maintain patients on therapy despite adverse events. We studied the relationship between early viral clearance in response to t...

BACKGROUND Previous studies using pegylated interferon (Peg-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) combination therapy suggested that patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 and low pretreatment HCV RNA level who achieved rapid virological response (RVR) can be treated for 24 weeks without compromising sustained virological response (SVR) rate. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to investigate the...

Resveratrol is suggested to have beneficial cardiovascular and renoprotective effects. Resveratrol increases endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) expression and nitric oxide (NO) synthesis. We hypothesized resveratrol acts as an acute renal vasodilator, mediated through increased NO production and scavenging of reactive oxygen species (ROS). In anesthetized rats, we found 5.0 mg/kg body wei...

Microgravity (microG)-induced orthostatic intolerance (OI) in astronauts is characterized by a marked decrease in cardiac output (CO) in response to an orthostatic stress. Since CO is highly dependent on venous return, alterations in the resistance to venous return (RVR) may be important in contributing to OI. The RVR is directly dependent on arterial compliance (C(a)), where aortic compliance ...

Several investigations have shown heterogeneity in the functional responses to angiotensin II (Ang II) in patients with essential hypertension. The present study was initiated to evaluate whether the AC polymorphism of the Ang II type 1 receptor (AT1R) gene contributes to this variability in Ang II responses. After 7 days of a high-sodium diet (220 mmol Na per day), we measured in 42 essential ...

Neuroimaging holds the promise that it may one day aid the clinical assessment of individual psychiatric patients. However, the vast majority of studies published so far have been based on average differences between groups, which do not permit accurate inferences at the level of the individual. We examined the potential of structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data for making accurate qu...

BACKGROUND Data on which to base definitive recommendations on the doses and duration of therapy for genotype 3 HCV/HIV-coinfected patients are scarce. We evaluated the efficacy of a lower peginterferon-α 2a dose and a shorter duration of therapy than the current standard of care in genotype 3 HCV/HIV-coinfected patients. METHODS AND FINDINGS Pilot, open-label, single arm clinical trial which...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the suitable treatment period in patients who achieve virological response during combination therapy of peginterferon and ribavirin for chronic hepatitis C virus infection. METHODS Inclusion criteria were HCV-genotype 1b, serum HCV RNA level of > or =100 KIU/ml before treatment, and negativity of serum HCV RNA during treatment. The 366 patient...

BACKGROUND Pegylated interferon and ribavirin for 72 weeks improve sustained virological response (SVR) in HCV genotype 1 (HCV-1) slow viral responders. Whether interleukin 28B (IL28B) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes and on-treatment viral responses can identify non-rapid virological response (RVR) patients who benefit from 48 or 72 weeks of therapy remains unclear. METHODS Tre...