Prevalence of occult hepatitis B virus infection in haemodialysis patients from central Greece

AIM:To assess the hepatitis B virus(HBV)-DNA and the prevalence of occult HBV infection in end-stage renal failure(ESRF)patients from Central Greece. METHODS:Sera from 366 ESRF patients attending five out of six dialysis units from Central Greece were investigated for HBV-DNA by real-time polymerase chain reaction.Only serum samples with repeatedly detectable HBV-DNA were considered positive.IgG antibodies to hepatitis C virus(anti-HCV)were tested by a third generation enzyme linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA),while IgG antibodies to hepatitis E virus (anti-HEV)were tested by two commercially available ELISAs.RESULTS:HBV-DNA was detected in 15/366 patient (4.1%)and HBsAg in 20/366(5.5%).The prevalenc of occult HBV infection was 0.9%(3/346 HBsAg negative patients).Occult HBV was not associate with a specific marker of HBV infection or anti-HCV o anti-HEV reactivity.There was no significant differenc in HBV-DNA titres,demographic and biochemica features,between patients with occult HBV infectio and those with HBsAg-positive chronic HBV infection. CONCLUSION:In central Greece,4%of ESRF patient had detectable HBV-DNA,though in this setting,th prevalence of occult HBV seems to be very low(0.9%).

Role for mycobacterial infection in pathogenesis of primary biliary cirrhosis?

Primary biliary cirrhosis(PBC) is a progressive cholestatic liver disease characterized by the immunemediated destruction of biliary epithelial cells in small intrahepatic bile ducts.The disease is characterized by circulating antimitochondrial antibodies(AMAs) as well as disease-specific antinuclear antibodies,cholestatic liver function tests,and characteristic histological features,including granulomas.A variety of organisms are involved in granuloma formation,of which mycobacteria are the most commonly associated.This has led to the hypothesis that mycobacteria may be involved in the pathogenesis of PBC,along with other infectious agents.Additionally,AMAs are found in a subgroup of patients with mycobacterial infections,such as leprosy and pulmonary tuberculosis.Antibodies against species-specific mycobacterial proteins have been reported in patients with PBC,but it is not clear whether these antibodies are specific for the disease.In addition,data in support of the involvement of the role of molecular mimicry between mycobacterial and human mitochondrial antigens as triggers of cross-reactive immune responses leading to the loss of immunological tolerance,and the induction of pathological features have been published.Thus,antibodies against mycobacterial heat shock protein appear to cross-recognize AMA-specific autoantigens,but it is not clear whether these autoantibodies are mycobacterium-species-specific,and whether they are pathogenic or incidental.The view that mycobacteria are infectious triggers of PBC is intriguing,but the data provided so far are not conclusive.

PBOND:Web Server for the Prediction of Proline and Non-Proline cis/trans Isomerization

PBOND is a web server that predicts the conformation of the peptide bond between any two amino acids. PBOND classifies the peptide bonds into one out of four classes, namely cis imide （cis-Pro）, cis amide （cis-nonPro）, trans imide （trans-Pro） and trans amide （trans-nonPro）. Moreover, for every prediction a reliability index is computed. The underlying structure of the server consists of three stages： （1） feature extraction, （2） feature selection and （3） peptide bond classification. PBOND can handle both single sequences as well as multiple sequences for batch processing. The predictions can either be directly downloaded from the web site or returned via e-mail. The PBOND web server is freely available at http：//195.251.198.21/pbond.html.