B virus, Hepatitis

Beginning November 5, 2012, heterosexual HIV-1-serodiscordant couples were enrolled in a prospective, open-label, implementation science-driven study of ART and PrEP for HIV-1 prevention (the Partners Demonstration Project, Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02775929). The overall goal was to evaluate a scalable, integrated, and pragmatic delivery approach for ART and time-limited PrEP, in combination with targeted counseling, brief adherence promotion, and frequency of follow-up designed to reflect approaches suitable for public health settings in East Africa. A sample size of 1,000 couples was chosen to provide a robust evaluation of the integrated ART and PrEP delivery strategy, across a diversity of clinical research sites. Couples were recruited using community outreach methods by four clinical care and research sites in Kenya (Kisumu and Thika) and Uganda (Kabwohe and Kampala). Recruitment strategies included working with voluntary counseling and testing centers, antenatal clinics and programs for prevention of mother-to-child HIV-1 transmission, referrals from HIV-1 care providers, including those performing testing of partners of known HIV-1 infected individuals engaged in HIV-1 care, and community promotion activities for couples’ testing.
Eligible couples were ≥18 y of age, sexually active, and intending to remain as a couple. At the time of enrollment, HIV-1 seronegative partners had never used PrEP, had normal renal function (defined as an estimated creatinine clearance ≥60 mL/min using the Cockcroft-Gault equation), were not infected with hepatitis B virus, and were not pregnant or breastfeeding. At enrollment, HIV-1 seropositive partners were not using ART; so as not to have the research process detract from immediate clinical need for ART, couples were excluded if the HIV-1-infected partner had WHO stage III or IV HIV-1 disease conditions. In addition, in order to recruit a population at higher risk for HIV-1 infection, a validated, empiric risk scoring tool was applied, and couples with a score ≥5 (out of a maximum of 12) were eligible for enrollment; in prior studies of HIV-1-serodiscordant couples, a score ≥5 was associated with an HIV-1 incidence in excess of 3%–4% per year [11 (link)]. For calculating the score, characteristics assessed at the time of screening included age of the HIV-1-uninfected partner, number of children in the partnership, circumcision status of HIV-1-uninfected men, whether the couple was cohabitating, whether the couple had had sex unprotected by a condom in the prior month, and the plasma HIV-1 RNA level in the HIV-1-infected partner. There was no obligation for couples to commit to initiating ART or PrEP as part of study eligibility. Ineligible couples were referred for standard of care HIV-1 prevention and treatment services.

In the present study in silico approaches were also used  to trace the active compounds against Hepatitis B virus. It is a convenient drug screening method, where the candidate drugs can be virtually examined at low cost in a short duration. This involves computational simulation of target-ligand interaction and regulates the perfect alignment of binding of one molecule to the second molecule to generate a stable complex. This method, called docking, is used to find the activity of binding of a tiny molecule (in this case, a drug candidate- chrysin, and a positive control lamivudine) to their protein target (in this case HMGB1) by using the scoring functions.
This screening method plays a pivotal role in the functional designing of drug candidates.

This retrospective study was approved by the hospital Institutional Review Board. The requirement for written informed consent from patients was waived.
Initially, for the primary cohort, 1091 patients were identified that had undergone a surgical resection or liver transplant for primary HCC between July 2020 and October 2021 at our tertiary care hospital. Patients were included when they had undergone dynamic-enhanced MRI in the liver within 2 months prior to surgery. Exclusion criteria were: (a) preoperative antitumoral treatment; (b) unavailable clinical data; (c) poor quality radiologic or pathologic images; and (d) no pathology slides available for review. Then, 53 patients with a pathologic diagnosis of MTM-HCC and 522 patients with non-MTM HCC were identified. According to the data size of the MTM-HCC group, two months of patients (a total of 70 non-MTM HCC patients) were drawn randomly from the non-MTM HCC group as a control. Finally, 53 patients with MTM-HCC and 70 patients with non-MTM HCC were included (Figure 1). The validation cohort comprised other patients that underwent a surgical resection for primary HCC from July 2013 to November 2015 at the same center (15 (link)).
Clinical data were retrospectively collected by reviewing electronic medical records. We collected data on patient demographics and survival; the etiology of chronic liver disease (hepatitis B virus; hepatitis C virus; chronic alcohol consumption; family cancer history; preoperative serum levels of aspartate transaminase, alanine transaminase, albumin, serum ferritin, creatinine, platelets, total bilirubin, and γ-glutamyl transpeptidase; the prothrombin time; alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125), carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA199), and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA); and the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stage.

Volunteers who meet the following conditions can be included in the trial: 1) healthy men and women aged 18–45, with a body mass index of 19-28 kg / m² (including the boundary value). The weight of male is not less than 50.0 kg, and that of female is not less than 45.0 kg. 2) Good health, no history of cardiovascular system, digestive system, urinary system, endocrine system, blood system, respiratory system, nervous system, etc. The following examination results are normal or abnormal with no clinical significance. The examinations include: body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, hematology, blood biochemistry, urinalysis, serological detection of hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Treponema pallidum, coagulation, 12 lead electrocardiogram (ECG), alcohol breath test, drug screening and female pregnancy test. 3) The subjects and their spouses did not have family planning within 6 months and chose appropriate contraceptive methods. 4) Before the study, all subjects were informed of the purpose, process, benefits and risks of the study and voluntarily signed informed consent.
Subjects who were allergic to study drugs, smoke, drink alcohol, and participate in other clinical trials within 3 months could not participate in the trial.