Introduction: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major public health problem which influences about 170 million people worldwide. Different types of vaccines have been designed using HCV structural proteins to control the viral infection. The core nucleocapsid protein is one of the most conserved proteins and a desirable target for HCV vaccines, especially the protein-based vaccines. In cur...

background: hepatitis c virus (hcv) is a main public health problem causing chronic liver infection and subsequently liver cirrhosis and lethal hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc). vaccination based on hcv capsid proteins has attracted a special interest for prevention of viral infections. the core protein is a basic and evolutionary most conserved protein, which regulates the cellular processes rel...

objective: hepatitis c virus (hcv) is one of the most relevant persistent infections afflicting the human population. control of viral replication in hcv infection has been associated with the cellular component of the host immune response. several mechanisms have been proposed to explain this abnormal immune response, among them an altered activity of regulatory t cells (tregs) being the most ...

results among the 181 anti-hcv ab negative patients, 13 (7.2%) were positive for hcv core ag and 11 (6%) had detectable hcv rna with a range of 40-336543 iu/ml by pcr. the two tests had a high measurement agreement (kappa=0.82, p<0.001). of the 13 patients with positive hcv core ag test results, 3 were negative for hcv rna. considering real time pcr for hcv rna as the gold standard for hcv infe...

background the rate of mother-to-infant hepatitis c virus (hcv) transmission is relatively low, however, this mode of infection is the most important route for childhood hcv involvement. the chances of transmission are increased by the level of maternal hcv viraemia and maternal human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) co infection. objectives the objective of the present study was to determine the p...

conclusions core-lds interaction may be an underlying molecular mechanism to induce liver steatosis in patients with hcv infection. this interaction is also crucial for efficient viral replication and persistence in infected cells. steatosis can also interfere with efficient standard interferon therapy treatment. management of steatosis should be considered along with standard care for achievin...

Background and Aims: The hepatitis C virus (HCV) F protein is a recently described, frameshift product of HCV core encoding sequence. Its function and antigenic properties are unknown. In order to assess the presence of antibodies specific for F protein we characterized specific anti-F antibodies in patients with chronic HCV infection. Methods: The F protein was cloned from the HCV genome....

Background and Aims: DNA constructs containing HCV antigens have become one of the vaccine candidates for induction of anti-HCV cellular and humoral immunity. In this study, we constructed a novel expressing vector harboring a fusion sequence derived from an overlapping fragment in the middle of NS3 and a truncated core fragment to avoid troubles reported to be associated with full gene express...

background: hepatitis c (hcv) is a worldwide problem without an effective vaccine with more than 170 million chronically infected people worldwide. dna vaccines expressing antigenic portions of the virus with adjutants have recently been developed as a novel vaccination technology. objectives: in the present study, a dna vaccine expressing hcv core protein was developed with il12 as a genetic a...