Retreatment with interferon of relapsed chronic hepatitis C patients / 中华肝脏病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To evaluate the efficacy and investigate the influencing factors of the interferon (IFN) retreatment for patients with chronic hepatitis C relapsed after a previous IFN treatment.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A retrospective study was designed to analyze the retreatment with IFN of 60 relapsed chronic hepatitis C patients. All patients were from a randomized, opened and multi-center clinical trial about the efficacy and security of PEG-IFNalpha-2a compared to CIFNalpha-2a in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C in China. There were 35 patients treated with PEG-IFNalpha-2a and 25 with CIFNalpha-2a. The main parameter to evaluate the efficacy was sustained viral response (SVR) rate. The influence of viral concentration in serum, genotype and drug categories on the responses to IFN were analyzed.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>For all the patients, the end of treatment virus response (ETVR) and SVR rates were 55.00% and 35.00% respectively. ETVR rate of PEG-IFNalpha-2a was significantly higher than that of CIFNalpha-2a (74.29% and 28.00% respectively, P < 0.01). SVR rate of PEG-IFNalpha-2a was also markedly higher than that of CIFNalpha-2a (45.71% and 20.00% respectively, P < 0.05). However, there was no significant difference between the high and low viral load groups. Among the patients with genotype 1, ETVR and SVR rates of PEG-IFNalpha-2a (75.00%, 45.83%) were significantly higher than those of CIFNalpha-2a (22.22%, 11.11%), (P < 0.01, P < 0.05 respectively), but in patients with genotype non-1, there were no such differences between the two groups.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Some relapsed patients were not responsive to the IFN retreatment. The efficacy of PEG-IFNalpha-2a was superior to CIFNalpha-2a. The conventional IFN was not suggested to be used in the relapsed cases with genotype 1. The viral load was not associated with the efficacy of IFN retreatment.</p>

The difference in distribution of HCV genotypes between patients infected with HCV by transfusion and non-transfusion routes / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the HCV genotypes distribution in northern and southern cities in China and the difference between patients infected with HCV by transfusion and non-transfusion routes.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The HCV genotypes of the patients with chronic hepatitis C from 9 cities belonging to different regions were genotyped by the PCR products of 5 prime untranslated region NTR digested with restriction endonucleases, and the HCV genotypes distribution among different cities or between the patients infected with HCV through transfusion and other routes was analyzed.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The HCV genotypes of 214 in 219 cases were determined; 197 patients were infected with monogenotype HCV. The major epidemic genotypes of HCV isolates in China were 1b (76.64%) and 2a (18.22%), but 5.14% of patients were infected with HCV belonging to genotype 3b and this was the first report that there is genotype 4a in China. The HCV genotype distribution was not different in northern and southern areas, but was significantly different between patients infected with HCV through transfusion and non-transfusion routes (P=0.036). In patients infected trough transfusion, the rates of monogenotype HCV infection and genotype 1b were 93.88% and 76.87%, respectively, which were higher than those (86.57% and 58.21%) in the patients infected with HCV through non-transfusion routes. The rate of patient infected with mixed genotype HCV strains in non-transfusion group was 13.43%, which was higher than that (6.12%) of patients in transfusion group.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The HCV genotype distribution in northern and southern regions were similar, but was significantly different between the patients infected through transfusion and other routes.</p>

Studies on IgG antibodies of SARS patients / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the significance of detecting specific serum IgG antibodies in clinical diagnosis of SARS as well as affecting factors.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Enzyme-linked immunoassay kit for SARS coronavirus antibodies developed by HuaDa Biological Company was applied to detect specific serum IgG from SARS patients and the production of SARS specific antibodies among patients of different age groups, sex and with or without steroid treatment were statistically compared.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Out of 121 patients studied, 71.1% were SARS specific IgG positive. Patients younger than 15 years, between 15 to 59 years, older than 59 years had positive rates of 60.0%, 70.2%, and 85.7%, respectively with no statistically significance (P=0.766); patients with or without steroid treatment showed positive rates of 70.6% and 72.4%, respectively (P=0.84); patients exhibiting either severe or light syndromes showed positive rates of 78.1% and 67.4%, respectively (P=0.493); both male and female patients showed the same positive rate of 71.1%.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The sensitivity of the SARS specific IgG kit utilized needs to be further improved. The production of SARS IgG is not notably correlated with sex, age, seriousness of symptoms, and steroid treatment.</p>