Eva Herrmann

..Estimates of viral clearance and infected-cell loss support conclusions on these rates and on treatment mechanisms from previous studies on interferon-alpha-based treatments...

..However, it remains unknown whether these differences in the initial viral decline predict differences in the primary clinical endpoint, sustained virological response...

..The main aims of analysing hepatitis C viral kinetics include the efficient comparison of different treatment regimens, prediction of virological response, and conclusions on antiviral mechanisms of therapy...

..Mutations in nonstructural (NS) hepatitis C virus (HCV) proteins enhance replication in HCV-1a/b replicons. The prevalence of such mutations and their clinical significance in vivo are unknown...

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..033). Lymphocyte subsets show different patterns of CD81 response before and during antiviral treatment, which are associated with administration of IFN-alpha and antiviral response...

..The aim of the study was to validate the N-terminal propeptide of the brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in predicting left ventricular diastolic dysfunction diagnosed by tissue Doppler imaging in patients with chronic liver disease...

..The aim of the study was to evaluate growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF-15), a marker of various stress pathways in the heart and extracardiac tissues...

..Here, we investigated a novel approach for noninvasive assessment of liver fibrosis using sonography-based real-time elastography, which can be performed with conventional ultrasound probes during a routine sonography examination...

..The aim of the study was to assess LVD according to a novel global systolic dyssynchrony index (SDI) derived from real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography in patients after repaired CRHD...

..Important structural and functional properties of NS4B are predicted with implications for ER-stress response, altered gene expression and replication efficacy...

..This finding suggests that combination treatment leads to a better restoration of the patient's immune response...

..For improvement of mutational analysis, a refined specific functional data test procedure is proposed...

..This algorithm recognizes 53.7% of nonresponders previously identified at week 24 of treatment...

..Analysis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA kinetics in compartments other than plasma may help in understanding HCV replication and identifying clinically significant patterns of treatment response...

..Cell death during antiviral therapy of patients with chronic hepatitis C is not well understood...

..Little is known about NS5A sequences of HCV-1a. We investigated whether genetic variability of HCV-1a NS5A correlates with the early HCV kinetics during treatment...

..Non-responders with HCV-1b infection showed higher numbers of non-conservative aa variations within HCV p7 than responders, irrespective of the application of amantadine...

..Ribavirin acts as an RNA virus mutagen in vitro, thereby leading to error catastrophe. However, data in CHC are controversial...

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..These data show that virological response in patients with chronic hepatitis C is less associated with baseline ALT than with GGT levels...

..019). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that both the extraction and amplification step of the TMA-based assay contribute to the higher sensitivity compared with standard RT-PCR...

..In patients infected by HCV-3 (high viral load), longer treatment may be necessary...

..Enhancement of antiviral T-cell reactivity requires rapid viraemia clearance, rather than immunostimulation alone...

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..This second phase decay is predictive for the virologic end-of-treatment and even more the sustained response. Non-responding patients typically show constant viremia or even a rebound during this second phase...

..However, motivation and compliance are requisites and a CIFN induction is not required...

..Thus, the conclusion from in vitro studies that the upregulation of interleukin-8 by the hepatitis C virus contributes to the inhibition of the antiviral actions of interferon-alpha may also be applicable in vivo...

..CONCLUSION: In this large placebo-controlled multicenter study, amantadine even at a dose of 400 mg/day did not improve virological response rates of peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin in patients with chronic genotype HCV-1 infection...

..A meta-analysis was performed to assess the overall performance of transient elastography for the diagnosis of liver fibrosis and to analyze factors influencing the diagnostic accuracy...

..Therefore, early detection of fibrosis is essential to identify patients at risk. Transient elastography has been evaluated for noninvasive staging of liver fibrosis in a multitude of studies...

..HBeAg loss is achieved in 36% of patients after one year of PEG-IFN-alpha2b treatment and combination therapy with lamivudine is not superior to PEG-IFN-alpha2b monotherapy...

..The aim of this study was to investigate whether amantadine reduces deterioration of quality of life in patients with chronic hepatitis C during and after treatment with interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) and ribavirin...

..Together these data indicate that a high density of cell surface-exposed CD81 is a key determinant for productive HCV entry into host cells...

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