Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. The current standard therapy for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) consists of a combination of pegylated IFN alpha (pegIFNalpha) and ribavirin. It achieves a sustained viral clearance in only 50-60% of patients. To learn more about molecular mechanisms underlying treatment failure, we investigated IFN-induced signal...

To identify potential pharmacodynamic biomarkers to guide dose selection in clinical trials using anti-interferon-alpha (IFN-α) monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), we used an Affymetrix human genome array platform and identified 110 IFN-α/β-inducible transcripts significantly upregulated in whole blood (WB) of 41 SLE patients. The overexpression of these ge...

Depression is known to occur frequently in chronic hepatitis C viral (HCV) patients receiving interferon (IFN)-α therapy. In this study, we investigated whether indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase1 (IDO1)-mediated tryptophan (TRP) metabolism plays a critical role in depression occurring as a side effect of IFN-α therapy. Increases in serum kynurenine (KYN) and 3-hydroxykynurenine (3-HK) concentrations ...

BACKGROUND The aim of this exploratory study is to gain for the first time a more comprehensive picture of the impact of changes of quinolinic acid concentrations on depressive symptomatology during and after IFN-α therapy. METHODS The quinolinic acid concentrations of 35 HCV patients are examined in a prospective survey over the entire period of IFN-α treatment as well as three months later ...

Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection had been associated with cytokine imbalance. Cytokine dynamics in response to peginterferon/ribavirin therapy have an impact on the treatment efficacy for HCV patients. Ninety-two treatment-naive chronic hepatitis C patients were treated with 24 or 48 weeks of peginterferon/ribavirin therapy according to their viral genotypes. Sustained virologic respon...

In the advanced stages of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection the defective interferon (IFN) responses have been observed. Persisting high lebels of the acid-labile interferons (al-IFNs) have been found in sera of the patients with AIDS. The combined antiretroviral therapy, that included the reverse transcriptase and viral protease inhibitors, resulted in a significant improvement of t...

BACKGROUND Approximately 5% of hepatitis B virus (HBV) carriers are coinfected with hepatitis D virus (HDV). HBV/HDV coinfection is a major cause of cirrhosis and end stage liver disease in chronic HBsAg carriers. The only approved therapy for chronic hepatitis delta is interferon alpha (IFN α) in either pegylated or conventional forms. Although higher doses and longer durations of IFN α therap...

Interferons (IFN) elicit antiviral and antineoplastic activities by binding to specific receptors on the cell surface. The binding characteristics of IFN to human lymphocytes were studied using IFN alpha 2 labeled with 125I to high specific activity. The specific binding curves generated were analyzed by the LIGAND program of Munson and Rodbard to determine receptor numbers. The number of recep...

Abstract Background: A major impact of the IL28B gene polymor-phism on response to antiviral therapy in chronic hepatitis C have been described recently by a lot studies. This study aims scrutinize genotypes donors and recipients treatment with INF based or DAA among patients that underwent liver trans-plantation. Aim Study: correlate genotype for had undergone transplantation therapy, Direct A...

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), has infected and killed millions people worldwide. It substantially increased the burden on healthcare system. However, optimal approach to treatment COVID-19 is uncertain. “Off-label” use lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) interferons, particularly interferon beta (IFN-β),...