P Halfon

..The aim of the study was to investigate the reliability and accuracy of alternative routes of testing for single nucleotide polymorphism allele rs12979860CC...

....

..The viral dynamics parameters of HCV-4 appear similar to those of HCV-1 and slower than those of HCV-2. HCV-4 infected patients should be grouped with those with HCV-1 when therapeutic schemes are considered in relation to genotype...

..Few data have reported the influence of IR on steatosis and fibrosis in the context of HIV-HCV coinfection...

..Indeed, the prognostic performance of FibroTest was at least as accurate as that of biopsy in patients with chronic hepatitis C or B, or ALD...

..The aim of the study was to analyse viral kinetics during the first 6 weeks of treatment (interferon plus ribavirin) in 18 relapsed hepatitis C patients after a first course of interferon monotherapy...

..The significance of such occult infection must be elucidated...

....

..We evaluated the test performance profile (TPP) of blood tests of liver fibrosis...

..The NPV was 97.4% for the AMPLICOR assay and might be compromised if HPV types 26, 53, and 66 were considered oncogenic. The accuracy of these two assays is good and is compatible with routine clinical use in the triage of ASCUS cases...

..In conclusion, the high sensitivities and large dynamic ranges of the Abbott and Roche assays show that a single real-time quantitative PCR assay is fully adequate for clinical and therapeutic management of HCV...

..However, these scores must be used only after a validation in multicentric independent studies. The future is based on the comparison and validation of these scores after laboratory methods standardization...

..The aim of the present study was to search for an association between chronic Chlamydia pneumoniae infection, indicated by elevated antibody titers against the pathogen, atherothrombosis and the occurrence of arterial ischemic events...

..All assays, however, failed to detect HCV RNA in some cases. Despite the use of the IU standard HCV-infected patients might be monitored with only one assay...

....

..Improving insulin sensitivity may be a useful adjunct to HCV therapy in HIV-HCV co-infected patients...

..Here, we aimed to assess the effect of antiviral treatment on non-invasive serological markers of liver fibrosis in HIV-HCV-coinfected patients...

..The aim of this study was to determine whether a single IL-28B genotype SNP rs8099917 or rs12979860 determination is sufficient to predict treatment failure in patients with chronic HCV...

....

..Based on HVR1 and phylogenetic tree analysis, the couple had closely related isolates. These findings confirm sexual transmission of HCV without other risk factors...

..The Trugene and InnoLiPA assays gave concordant results within HCV types in 100% of cases. The ability to discriminate at the subtype level was 76 and 74% for the Trugene and the InnoLiPA assays, respectively...

..001). A standardized real-time PCR assay is more appropriate than the antigen assay for detecting CMV. It allowed earlier diagnosis of active CMV infection and monitoring of the response to anti-CMV treatment...

..Molecular and epidemiological analysis suggested that nosocomial patient-to-patient transmission was the most likely explanation for the virus spread in the autodialysis unit under study...

..The detection of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA provides higher sensitivity but lower specificity than cytology for the identification of high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN)...

..Among non-selected consecutive non-responder patients, re-treatment with PEG IFN-α-2a + RIBA is associated with virological response regardless of the presence of antibody-mediated resistance to conventional IFN treatment...

..DNA-chip technology, Papillocheck HPV-screening (Greiner) and reverse dot blot, Linear Array (LA) (Roche) are tools to assess the distribution of HPV genotypes...

..The assay can differentiate between the infection by HPV 16, HPV 18 and non-HPV 16/18 types through the distinct fluorescent labels on the type specific probes...

..The risk of male-to-female intravaginal HIV-1 transmission is estimated at about 1 event per 200-2000 coital acts. The aim of this study was to assess the residual risk of HIV presence in semen in patients under HAART therapy...

..A recent tool, NucliSENS EasyQ HPV, uses a new concept to directly detect the expression of HPV oncogenic factors (E6 and E7) from the most prevalent HPV genotypes in cervical cancer (16, 18, 31, 33 and 45)...

..CMV and hepatitis B virus (HBV) can be sexually transmitted. However, co-infection with these viruses has never been reported and the clinical follow-up after acute HBV-CMV infection is not known...

..Non-invasive liver fibrosis scores such as Hepascore (HS) have been proposed as an alternative to liver biopsy in hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients...

..Genotype A was associated with HBeAg positivity and genotype D with HBe antibody positivity. In our European patients, we find no clear association between a given HBV genotype and liver disease severity...

..The combination of all tests without liver biopsy allowed 191/235 (81.3%) patients to be correctly classified; liver biopsy remained mandatory in some patients (18.7%)...

..We tested the hypothesis that absence of mutations in the NS5A (aa 2209-2248) sequence is required for interferon resistance. We also investigated the importance of different HCV-1b isolates in interferon response in France...

..9- to 5.6-fold with Monitor. These large spontaneous fluctuations (up to 0.75 log), observed daily, weekly, and monthly, raise doubt about the clinical value of a single assessment of pretherapeutic viremia...

..These results demonstrate that using a single test is adequate in the routine diagnosis of HCV infection in clinical laboratory, as recommended by the last French and European consensus conference...

..CONCLUSIONS: This prospective independent and multicenter study confirms the diagnostic value of FT and AT found in the princeps study and suggests that FT and AT can be an alternative to biopsy in most patients with chronic HCV...

..This example of transmission could have a major impact in sports such as boxing or rugby. We suggest that in any fight, single use or nondisposable material should be used to dry blood to avoid such contamination...

..PERSPECTIVES: Treatment of chronic HBV infection, as most of other chronic viral infection, should be based on combination therapy with a special search for the appearance of HBV mutant resistant...

..Since several previous reports have indicated that HIV infection may be associated with a decrease in spontaneous fertility, our goal was also to assess the fertility status of the HIV-1-infected women entering our ICSI programme...

..The latter is useful in selecting the right therapy and duration of treatment, because the response depends on the genotype (better response rate for the genotypes 2 and 3)...

..Moreover, they highlight that HBV sequence analysis is an essential tool to optimize therapeutic management of HBV chronic infection in clinical practice in order to choose the appropriate nucleos(t)ide analogues...

..This finding is important for our understanding of HCV-DC interaction and immunopathogenesis of HCV infection...

..Tight but incomplete control of HIV-1 latency by CpG methylation might have important implications for strategies aimed at eradicating HIV-1 infection...

..Processivity of DNA synthesis remains unaffected. These results explain why the two mutations do not combine in the clinic and might give a mechanism for a decreased viral fitness at the molecular level...

..We focused on protease mutations conferring HCV resistance to BILN-2061 and described for the first time such mechanism at a molecular level...

..To study the presence of three HIV-1 protease inhibitors (PIs) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), semen, and lymph nodes and to assess the correlations with residual viral replication in these compartments...

....

..03 to 0.14. The bDNA 3.0 assay results were positively correlated with the bDNA 2.0 assay results (r = 0.9533). Taking in account the overall performance, this assay could be used as a routine tool for the HCV RNA quantification...

..The viral load increase in most patients is compatible with the outgrowth of virus with fewer or no mutations...

..To evaluate the role of genetic factors in the pathogenesis of porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT) and their association with chronic hepatitis C...

..Further studies are required to clarify the role and clinical relevance of drug penetration in sanctuaries in terms of long-term efficacy and drug resistance...

..We explored other fibrosis staging accuracy measures designed for ordinal gold standards, the C-statistic and the Obuchowski measure...

..65, P < 0.0001), weight < 75 kg (OR = 1.99, P < 0.035), and age < 50 years (OR = 1.58, P < 0.082). Our results suggest that viral load seems to negatively influence the response to HBV vaccine...

..To compare non-invasive biological liver fibrosis scores, as alternatives to liver biopsy, in HIV/HCV co-infected patients...

..We determined the prevalence and determinants of worsening fibrosis in patients coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) who were receiving anti-HCV therapy...

..The aim of this study was to assess the relationships between the AUC and the prevalence of each fibrosis stage and to elaborate simple methods of standardization...

..e. haptoglobin, apolipoprotein A1 and alpha2 macroglobulin. The aim of this study was to evaluate the analytical variability of the FT proteins...

..Furthermore, the clinical implications of HBV genotyping and the determination of precore/core mutants need to be clearly stated to justify the standardization of these methods...

..This study aimed at correlating the presence of extrahepatic manifestations with hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotypes in patients with chronic HBV infection...

..We assessed the reliability of non-invasive biological scoring indexes (Fibrotest-Actitest [FT-AT], Forns, APRI, age-platelet, platelet, hyaluronic acid) as non-invasive alternatives to liver biopsy (LB) in 138 HCV-infected patients...

..78 and 0.95). The FT-AT was introduced in Israel (Rambam Laboratory) in March 2005...

..To analyze the barriers to HCV treatment in HIV-HCV co-infected patients and their evolution between 2004 and 2006...

....

..We evaluated the association of determinants of homocysteine metabolism with the outcome of HBV infection...

..We describe possible zoonotic transmission of hepatitis E virus that involved direct contact between a pet pig and its owner...

..The aims of this study were to evaluate the analytical variability of the Fibrotest-Actitest proteins alpha 2-macroglobulin, haptoglobin and apolipoprotein-A1, and to assess their impact on the Fibrotest-Actitest scores...

..The harmful impact of HIV underlines the need for improving:..

..HLA class II alleles may weakly contribute to the severity of HCV liver disease. Of persons infected with HCV, only 15%-20% spontaneously clear the virus, and the rest become chronically infected...

..All together, these results define at the molecular level how nucleoside-resistant viruses can be driven to reduced viral fitness...