| 1. |
- Fontana, Robert J., et al.
(författare)
-
Daclatasvir combined with sofosbuvir or simeprevir in liver transplant recipients with severe recurrent hepatitis C infection
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Liver transplantation. - : Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health). - 1527-6465 .- 1527-6473. ; 22:4, s. 446-458
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Daclatasvir (DCV) is a potent, pangenotypic nonstructural protein 5A inhibitor with demonstrated antiviral efficacy when combined with sofosbuvir (SOF) or simeprevir (SMV) with or without ribavirin (RBV) in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Herein, we report efficacy and safety data for DCV-based all-oral antiviral therapy in liver transplantation (LT) recipients with severe recurrent HCV. DCV at 60mg/day was administered for up to 24 weeks as part of a compassionate use protocol. The study included 97 LT recipients with a mean age of 59.3 +/- 8.2 years; 93% had genotype 1 HCV and 31% had biopsy-proven cirrhosis between the time of LT and the initiation of DCV. The mean Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score was 13.0 +/- 6.0, and the proportion with Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) A/B/C was 51%/31%/12%, respectively. Mean HCV RNA at DCV initiation was 14.3x6 log(10) IU/mL, and 37% had severe cholestatic HCV infection. Antiviral regimens were selected by the local investigator and included DCV+SOF (n=77), DCV+SMV (n=18), and DCV+SMV+SOF (n=2); 35% overall received RBV. At the end of treatment (EOT) and 12 weeks after EOT, 88 (91%) and 84 (87%) patients, respectively, were HCV RNA negative or had levels <43 IU/mL. CTP and MELD scores significantly improved between DCV-based treatment initiation and last contact. Three virological breakthroughs and 2 relapses occurred in patients treated with DCV+SMV with or without RBV. None of the 8 patient deaths (6 during and 2 after therapy) were attributed to therapy. In conclusion, DCV-based all-oral antiviral therapy was well tolerated and resulted in a high sustained virological response in LT recipients with severe recurrent HCV infection. Most treated patients experienced stabilization or improvement in their clinical status.
|
|
| 2. |
- Nijhof, Bonnie, et al.
(författare)
-
A New Fiji-Based Algorithm That Systematically Quantifies Nine Synaptic Parameters Provides Insights into Drosophila NMJ Morphometry
- 2016
-
Ingår i: PloS Computational Biology. - : Public Library Science. - 1553-734X .- 1553-7358. ; 11:3
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The morphology of synapses is of central interest in neuroscience because of the intimate relation with synaptic efficacy. Two decades of gene manipulation studies in different animal models have revealed a repertoire of molecules that contribute to synapse development. However, since such studies often assessed only one, or at best a few, morphological features at a given synapse, it remained unaddressed how different structural aspects relate to one another. Furthermore, such focused and sometimes only qualitative approaches likely left many of the more subtle players unnoticed. Here, we present the image analysis algorithm Drosophila_NMJ_Morphometrics, available as a Fiji-compatible macro, for quantitative, accurate and objective synapse morphometry of the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ), a well-established glutamatergic model synapse. We developed this methodology for semi-automated multiparametric analyses of NMJ terminals immunolabeled for the commonly used markers Dlg1 and Brp and showed that it also works for Hrp, Csp and Syt. We demonstrate that gender, genetic background and identity of abdominal body segment consistently and significantly contribute to variability in our data, suggesting that controlling for these parameters is important to minimize variability in quantitative analyses. Correlation and principal component analyses (PCA) were performed to investigate which morphometric parameters are inter-dependent and which ones are regulated rather independently. Based on nine acquired parameters, we identified five morphometric groups: NMJ size, geometry, muscle size, number of NMJ islands and number of active zones. Based on our finding that the parameters of the first two principal components hardly correlated with each other, we suggest that different molecular processes underlie these two morphometric groups. Our study sets the stage for systems morphometry approaches at the well-studied Drosophila NMJ.
|
|
