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Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy

Pegylated-interferon-α based therapy for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is considered suboptimal as not all patients respond to the treatment and it is associated with several side effects that could lead to dose reduction and/or termination of therapy. The currently used markers to moni...

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Autores principales: Refaat, Bassem, Ashshi, Ahmed Mohamed, El-Shemi, Adel Galal, Azhar, Esam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4417604/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25969625
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/287640
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author Refaat, Bassem
Ashshi, Ahmed Mohamed
El-Shemi, Adel Galal
Azhar, Esam
author_facet Refaat, Bassem
Ashshi, Ahmed Mohamed
El-Shemi, Adel Galal
Azhar, Esam
author_sort Refaat, Bassem
collection PubMed
description Pegylated-interferon-α based therapy for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is considered suboptimal as not all patients respond to the treatment and it is associated with several side effects that could lead to dose reduction and/or termination of therapy. The currently used markers to monitor the response to treatment are based on viral kinetics and their performance in the prediction of treatment outcome is moderate and does not combine accuracy and their values have several limitations. Hence, the development of new sensitive and specific predictor markers could provide a useful tool for the clinicians and healthcare providers, especially in the new era of interferon-free therapy, for the classification of patients according to their response to the standard therapy and only subscribing the novel directly acting antiviral drugs to those who are anticipated not to respond to the conventional therapy and/or have absolute contraindications for its use. The importance of activins and follistatin in the regulation of immune system, liver biology, and pathology has recently emerged. This review appraises the up-to-date knowledge regarding the role of activins and follistatin in liver biology and immune system and their role in the pathophysiology of CHC.
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spelling pubmed-44176042015-05-12 Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy Refaat, Bassem Ashshi, Ahmed Mohamed El-Shemi, Adel Galal Azhar, Esam Mediators Inflamm Review Article Pegylated-interferon-α based therapy for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is considered suboptimal as not all patients respond to the treatment and it is associated with several side effects that could lead to dose reduction and/or termination of therapy. The currently used markers to monitor the response to treatment are based on viral kinetics and their performance in the prediction of treatment outcome is moderate and does not combine accuracy and their values have several limitations. Hence, the development of new sensitive and specific predictor markers could provide a useful tool for the clinicians and healthcare providers, especially in the new era of interferon-free therapy, for the classification of patients according to their response to the standard therapy and only subscribing the novel directly acting antiviral drugs to those who are anticipated not to respond to the conventional therapy and/or have absolute contraindications for its use. The importance of activins and follistatin in the regulation of immune system, liver biology, and pathology has recently emerged. This review appraises the up-to-date knowledge regarding the role of activins and follistatin in liver biology and immune system and their role in the pathophysiology of CHC. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2015 2015-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4417604/ /pubmed/25969625 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/287640 Text en Copyright © 2015 Bassem Refaat et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review Article
Refaat, Bassem
Ashshi, Ahmed Mohamed
El-Shemi, Adel Galal
Azhar, Esam
Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy
title Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy
title_full Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy
title_fullStr Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy
title_full_unstemmed Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy
title_short Activins and Follistatin in Chronic Hepatitis C and Its Treatment with Pegylated-Interferon-α Based Therapy
title_sort activins and follistatin in chronic hepatitis c and its treatment with pegylated-interferon-α based therapy
topic Review Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4417604/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25969625
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/287640
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