BACKGROUND Perinatal HCV transmission appears to be an important cause of HCV in children. Treatment of chronic hepatitis C in young children is controversial because of spontaneous HCV clearance and possible adverse events. CASE REPORT Vertical HCV genotype 1 infection was diagnosed in a 3-month-old infant. In the subsequent clinical examination we still observed hepatomegaly, fluctuations o...

To test whether (HCV) persistence is related to interferon (IFN) hyporesponsiveness, peripheral blood monuclear cells from 29 patients and 11 controls were studied for MxA protein expression. In vitro, only IFN-alpha (P<.001) and interleukin-2 (P<.05) induced MxA protein expression above unstimulated levels. Forty patients were treated with IFN-alpha2b. Patients showed higher basal levels of Mx...

Since its first description nearly two centuries ago, melanoma has been a difficult disease to diagnose and treat. With the incidence and mortality rates slowly increasing, understanding this disease is more important than ever. Herein, the current diagnostic and treatment recommendations for melanoma of the head and neck are reviewed, with special emphasis on the use of sentinel lymph node bio...

We investigated the relationship between serum ribavirin concentrations and clearance, as well as therapeutic efficacy and adverse reactions, in 97 Japanese patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infections treated with a 6-month course of high-dose alpha2b interferon (6 million units/day) plus ribavirin (600 to 800 mg/day) combination therapy. This randomized trial showed that the saturation ...

West Nile virus, a member of the family Flaviviridae, has spread throughout the United States. With more than 9000 cases and 200 deaths in 2003, West Nile virus has become the most common cause of viral encephalitis in several states. West Nile virus encephalitis is a zoonosis. The life cycle of the virus includes mainly birds as hosts and mosquitoes as vectors. Humans are accidental hosts, ins...

BACKGROUND Approximately one-third of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection have persistently normal liver enzymes reflected by a normal serum alanine transaminase (ALT). Data with regards the efficacy and safety of treatment in patients chronically infected with Hepatitis C virus genotype 4 and normal serum ALT are limited. AIM To evaluate the efficacy and safety of peginterferon...

background: interferons (ifns) are common therapeutics for several diseases such as viral hepatitis, multiple sclerosis and malignancy. a variety of autoimmune related side effects have been observed during ifn therapy. rare cases of myopathy, polymyositis or dermatomyositis have been reported during therapy with high doses of ifn^5. case presentation: in this report, we describe a case with se...

Emotionally arousing events are recalled better than neutral events. This phenomenon, which helps us to remember important and potentially vital information, depends on the activation of noradrenergic transmission in the brain. Here we show that a deletion variant of ADRA2B, the gene encoding the alpha2b-adrenergic receptor, is related to enhanced emotional memory in healthy Swiss subjects and ...