Until now there have been few seroepidemiological data for hepatitis G virus/GB virus type C (HGV/GBV-C). A four-antigen HGV/GBV-C immunoblot was established to examine 446 serum specimens from healthy individuals without risk factors for parenteral viral transmission. These individuals were divided into seven groups according to age. Seroprevalence rates were low for children and adolescents (...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is associated with the development of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. We recently found that bovine lactoferrin, a milk protein belonging to the iron transporter family, effectively prevented HCV infection in cultured human hepatocytes (PH5CH8). We tested the hypothesis that lactoferrin inhibits HCV viremia in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Eleven patients wi...

The immunosuppressive drug cyclophosphamide was used to study the effect of immunosuppression on the degree of chronic lactic dehydrogenase virus (LDV) viremia in mice. Weekly injections of cyclophosphamide caused an increase of LDV viremia of ca. 2.5 log(10) 50% infectious doses per ml as compared to the viremia in the nontreated mice. This increase occurred at about the same time that the for...

BACKGROUND Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection that persists despite antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a daunting problem. Given the limited evidence that resting CD4+ T cell infection (RCI) is affected by the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor valproic acid (VPA), we measured the stability of RCI and residual viremia in patients who added VPA with or without raltegravir (RAL), or enfu...

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) reactivation is a common complication after liver transplantation (LT). Here, we investigated whether human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matching was related to HCMV infection and subsequent graft failure after LT for hepatitis B virus  cirrhosis. This retrospective study reviewed 91 LT recipients. All the patients were grouped according to HLA-A, HLA-B, and HLA-DR locus...

BACKGROUND Cytomegalovirus (CMV) viremia has been shown to be an independent risk factor for increased mortality among HIV-infected individuals in the developing world. While CMV infection is nearly ubiquitous in resource-poor settings, few data are available on the role of subclinical CMV reactivation on HIV. METHODS Using a cohort of mineworkers with stored plasma samples, we investigated t...

GB virus type C, first isolated in 1995, is a single-stranded RNA flavivirus that is genetically similar to hepatitis C virus (HCV) [1]. GBV-C is a relatively common infection worldwide, with up to 2% of blood donors and up to 40% of injection drug users (IDUs) in the United States demonstrating presence of GBV-C RNA in their plasma [1]. Up to 16% of healthy US blood donors and up to 70% of US ...

Several genome-wide association studies have identified a polymorphism located 35 kb upstream of the coding region of HLA-C gene (rs9264942; termed -35 C/T) as a host factor significantly associated with the control of HIV-1 viremia in untreated patients. The potential association of this host genetic polymorphism with the viral reservoirs has never been investigated, nor the association with t...