Search results for "ALPHA"
showing 10 items of 3228 documents
Peginterferon Alfa-2a plus Ribavirin for Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection
2002
Background Treatment with peginterferon alfa-2a alone produces significantly higher sustained virologic responses than treatment with interferon alfa-2a alone in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. We compared the efficacy and safety of peginterferon alfa-2a plus ribavirin, interferon alfa-2b plus ribavirin, and peginterferon alfa-2a alone in the initial treatment of chronic hepatitis C. Methods A total of 1121 patients were randomly assigned to treatment and received at least one dose of study medication, consisting of 180 μg of peginterferon alfa-2a once weekly plus daily ribavirin (1000 or 1200 mg, depending on body weight), weekly peginterferon alfa-2a plus daily pl…
Limbic activity in slow wave sleep in a healthy subject with alpha–delta sleep
2001
All-night electroencephalographic (EEG) activity was recorded in a healthy subject with known alpha-delta sleep. Recordings were made from all 19 of the 10/20 system electrode sites, and low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to estimate intracerebral current densities. Sleep stages were compared within classical frequency bands by statistical parametric mapping (SPM). With the onset of sleep, occipital alpha abated. With increasing depth of sleep, alpha power increased in a region comprising the left frontal lobe, the anterior and parietal cingulum, and the anterior and medial right front lobe. In slow wave sleep (SWS), frontal alpha power was much greater than in wake…
Vitamin D levels and IL28B polymorphisms are related to rapid virological response to standard of care in genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C.
2011
Background Genotype 1 (G1) chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients achieving a rapid virological response (RVR) on pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) plus ribavirin have a high chance of sustained virological response (SVR), influenced by IL28B status, viral load, fibrosis and insulin resistance. We assessed whether 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) serum levels are linked to RVR and can be used together with IL28B to construct a pretreatment model to predict RVR. Methods A total of 117 consecutive patients with G1 CHC were evaluated by biopsy and anthropometric and metabolic measurements. 25(OH)D serum levels were measured by HPLC. IL28B rs12979860 and rs8099917 polymorphisms were also evaluated. All p…
Topical prazosin attenuates sensitivity to tactile stimuli in patients with complex regional pain syndrome
2015
Background The sympathetic nervous system may play an important role in certain forms of chronic pain. The main aim of this study was to determine whether functional blockade of α1-adrenoceptors would alter sensitivity to cutaneous stimulation in patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Methods and Results In an initial study, high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry of intradermal interstitial fluid collected from the forearms of three healthy individuals established that the α1-adrenoceptor antagonist prazosin penetrated the skin barrier when mixed in Lipoderm® cream base. Next, we found that application of this cream to the forearm of 10 healthy participants a…
Acute stress impairs recall after interference in older people, but not in young people.
2013
Stress has been associated with negative changes observed during the aging process. However, very little research has been carried out on the role of age in acute stress effects on memory. We aimed to explore the role of age and sex in the relationship between hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity to psychosocial stress and short-term declarative memory performance. To do so, sixty-seven participants divided into two age groups (each group with a similar number of men and women) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and a control condition in a crossover design. Memory performance was assessed by the Rey Auditory Verbal …
The cellular immune responses induced in the follow-up of interferon-α treated patients with chronic hepatitis C may determine the therapy outcome
1998
Abstract Background/Aims: To study whether the host's immune response determines viral clearance in chronic hepatitis C, virological markers and antigen-specific T cell reactions were analysed in 30 chronic HCV carriers followed up during interferon-α therapy, 11 untreated anti-HCV positive individuals and 10 healthy controls. Methods: Proliferative T helper cell responses to recombinant HCV core and non-structural antigens were monitored by 3 H-thymidine uptake assay and compared to quantitative viraemia levels and HCV genotypes. Results: Of the 30 treated patients, six had sustained complete responses (20%), another six were transient therapy responders (20%) and 18 were non-responders (6…
Peginterferon alfa-2b plus weight-based ribavirin for 24 weeks in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus genotype 1 with low viral load who achieve …
2012
. In chronic hepatitis C (CHC), treatment duration may be individualized according to time to first undetectable hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA, with patients who attain undetectable HCV RNA early in treatment being candidates for shorter regimens. The aim of this study was to determine the relapse rate in patients with CHC genotype (G) 1 infection and low baseline viral load who achieved undetectable HCV RNA by week 4 [rapid virologic response (RVR)] when treated for 24 weeks. This was an open-label, multicentre, noninterventional study. Adult patients with G1 CHC infection and baseline viral load <600,000 IU/mL who attained RVR were treated with peginterferon alfa-2b (1.5 mu g/kg/week) plus …
Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) production by T cell receptor-primed T lymphocytes is a target for low dose methotrexate in rheumatoid arthritis
1999
SUMMARYMethotrexate (MTX) is an effective immunosuppressive agent in various chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, its mechanisms of action are only partially understood. In this study, we assessed the effects of MTX on the differentiation of peripheral blood (PB) CD4+CD45RA ‘naive’ and CD4+CD45RO ‘memory’ T cells from healthy controls and patients with RA. Accordingly, purified T cells were primed and restimulated in vitro via the T cell receptor (TCR) in the presence of IL-2 to generate effector T cells secreting large amounts of Th1 and Th2 cytokines. We observed that low doses of MTX strongly suppress TNF and to a lesser extent interferon-gamma (IFN-γ…
Neural Mechanisms of Placebo Anxiolysis
2015
The beneficial effects of placebo treatments on fear and anxiety (placebo anxiolysis) are well known from clinical practice, and there is strong evidence indicating a contribution of treatment expectations to the efficacy of anxiolytic drugs. Although clinically highly relevant, the neural mechanisms underlying placebo anxiolysis are poorly understood. In two studies in humans, we tested whether the administration of an inactive treatment along with verbal suggestions of anxiolysis can attenuate experimentally induced states of phasic fear and/or sustained anxiety. Phasic fear is the response to a well defined threat and includes attentional focusing on the source of threat and concomitant …
Diversity and dynamic changes of anelloviruses in plasma following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
2020
Monitoring of alphatorquevirus (torque teno virus [TTV]) DNA in plasma may prove to be useful to assess the net state of immune competence following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). There are scarce data published on the prevalence of beta (torque teno mini virus [TTMV]) and gammatorqueviruses (torque teno midi virus [TTMDV]) and, in particular, on the dynamics of anelloviruses in allo-HSCT patients. Twenty-five allo-HSCT recipients with available plasma specimens obtained before conditioning and after engraftment were included. Degenerated primers targeting a highly conserved genomic sequence across all anelloviruses were designed for genomic amplification an…