Impact of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations on sustained virologic response in HCV-infected patients: Results from the GUARD-C Cohort

BACKGROUND: Despite the introduction of direct-acting antiviral agents for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, peginterferon alfa/ribavirin remains relevant in many resource-constrained settings. The non-randomized GUARD-C cohort investigated baseline predictors of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations (sr-RD) and their impact on sustained virologic response (SVR) in patients receiving peginterferon alfa/ribavirin in routine practice. METHODS: A total of 3181 HCV-mono-infected treatment-naive patients were assigned to 24 or 48 weeks of peginterferon alfa/ribavirin by their physician. Patients were categorized by time-to-first sr-RD (Week 4/12). Detailed analyses of the impact of sr-RD on SVR24 (HCV RNA <50 IU/mL) were conducted in 951 Caucasian, noncirrhotic genotype (G)1 patients assigned to peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin for 48 weeks. The probability of SVR24 was identified by a baseline scoring system (range: 0-9 points) on which scores of 5 to 9 and <5 represent high and low probability of SVR24, respectively. RESULTS: SVR24 rates were 46.1% (754/1634), 77.1% (279/362), 68.0% (514/756), and 51.3% (203/396), respectively, in G1, 2, 3, and 4 patients. Overall, 16.9% and 21.8% patients experienced 651 sr-RD for peginterferon alfa and ribavirin, respectively. Among Caucasian noncirrhotic G1 patients: female sex, lower body mass index, pre-existing cardiovascular/pulmonary disease, and low hematological indices were prognostic factors of sr-RD; SVR24 was lower in patients with 651 vs. no sr-RD by Week 4 (37.9% vs. 54.4%; P = 0.0046) and Week 12 (41.7% vs. 55.3%; P = 0.0016); sr-RD by Week 4/12 significantly reduced SVR24 in patients with scores <5 but not 655. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, sr-RD to peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin significantly impacts on SVR24 rates in treatment-naive G1 noncirrhotic Caucasian patients. Baseline characteristics can help select patients with a high probability of SVR24 and a low probability of sr-RD with peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin

Selective phosphodiesterase inhibitors: a promising target for cognition enhancement

# The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Rationale One of the major complaints most people face during aging is an impairment in cognitive functioning. This has a negative impact on the quality of daily life and is even more prominent in patients suffering from neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression. So far, the majority of cognition enhancers are generally targeting one particular neurotransmitter system. However, recently phosphodiesterases (PDEs) have gained increased attention as a potential new target for cognition enhancement. Inhibition of PDEs increases the intracellular availability of the second messengers cGMP and/or cAMP. Objective The aim of this review was to provide an overvie

An intelligent cybersecurity system for detecting fake news in social media websites

International audiencePeople worldwide suffer from fake news in many life aspects, healthcare, transportation, education, economics, and many others. Therefore, many researchers have considered seeking techniques for automatically detecting fake news in the last decade. The most popular news agencies use e-publishing on their websites; even websites can publish any news they want. However, thus before quotation any news from a website, there should be a close look at news resource ranking by using a trusted websites classifier, such as the website world rank, which reflects the repute of these websites. This paper uses the world rank of news websites as the main factor of news accuracy by using two widespread and trusted websites ranking. Moreover, a secondary factor is proposed to compute the news accuracy similarity by comparing the current news with fakes news and getting the possible news accuracy. Experiments results are conducted on several benchmark datasets. The results showed that the proposed method got promising results compared to other comparative methods in defining the news accuracy

A novel secure cryptography model for data transmission based on Rotor64 technique

In recent years, there have been many Security vulnerabilities that threaten user security, these threats have led to the finding of user files, so the use of the Internet has become unlimited, and the number of digital network devices has increased,Therefore, maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of information has become an urgent necessity to preserve user information, due to the increase in hackers and intruders, and the innovation of modern methods of penetration every day. Data cryptography has proven to be a secure way to protect a user\u27s data. Many current cryptography algorithms are considered weak regarding data transmission over the Internet, so newly updated algorithms are in high demand. In this paper, we proposed to develop the ancient rotor machine depending on the base64 codding technique, in which we replaced the alphabets of the ancient rotor machine with the alphabets of base64 that contain 64 characters. Furthermore, we proposed a key exchange based on One-time password OTP code via SMS, OTP is mechanism for logging on to a network using unique password that can only be used once, to overcome the static password method that is least secure, and used it to generate the subkeys for rotor machines based on hash and random permutation techniques. MD5 algorithm function is used to authenticate the original message, Finally, we experimented with these techniques of secure sending e-mails by encrypting the contents of them with the proposed technique. However, the proposed security technique got promising results

The Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey

International audienc

Rabies in a Sand Cat (Felis margarita) in Saudi Arabia: One Health Implications

We report a case of rabies in a sand cat, Felis margarita, from Saudi Arabia. This incident suggests hitherto undocumented spillover infection in this species. Our report highlights the shortcomings of passive reporting, necessity of wildlife surveillance, and the need for a comprehensive One Health approach to disease prevention and control

Rabies in a Sand Cat (Felis margarita) in Saudi Arabia: One Health Implications

We report a case of rabies in a sand cat, Felis margarita, from Saudi Arabia. This incident suggests hitherto undocumented spillover infection in this species. Our report highlights the shortcomings of passive reporting, necessity of wildlife surveillance, and the need for a comprehensive One Health approach to disease prevention and control

Impact of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations on sustained virologic response in HCV-infected patients: Results from the GUARD-C Cohort

Background: Despite the introduction of direct-acting antiviral agents for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, peginterferon alfa/ribavirin remains relevant in many resource-constrained settings. The non-randomized GUARD-C cohort investigated baseline predictors of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations (sr-RD) and their impact on sustained virologic response (SVR) in patients receiving peginterferon alfa/ribavirin in routine practice. Methods: A total of 3181 HCV-mono-infected treatment-naive patients were assigned to 24 or 48 weeks of peginterferon alfa/ribavirin by their physician. Patients were categorized by time-to-first sr-RD (Week 4/12). Detailed analyses of the impact of sr-RD on SVR24 (HCV RNA <50 IU/mL) were conducted in 951 Caucasian, noncirrhotic genotype (G)1 patients assigned to peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin for 48 weeks. The probability of SVR24 was identified by a baseline scoring system (range: 0-9 points) on which scores of 5 to 9 and <5 represent high and low probability of SVR24, respectively. Results: SVR24 rates were 46.1 % (754/1634), 77.1% (279/362), 68.0% (514/756), and 51.3% (203/396), respectively, in G1,2, 3, and 4 patients. Overall, 16.9% and 21.8% patients experienced ≥1 sr-RD for peginterferon alfa and ribavirin, respectively. Among Caucasian noncirrhotic G1 patients: female sex, lower body mass index, pre-existing cardiovascular/pulmonary disease, and low hematological indices were prognostic factors of sr-RD; SVR24 was lower in patients with ≥1 vs. no sr-RD by Week 4 (37.9% vs. 54.4%; P = 0.0046) and Week 12 (41.7% vs. 55.3%; P = 0.0016); sr-RD by Week 4/12 significantly reduced SVR24 in patients with scores <5 but not ≥5. Conclusions: In conclusion, sr-RD to peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin significantly impacts on SVR24 rates in treatment-naive G1 noncirrhotic Caucasian patients. Baseline characteristics can help select patients with a high probability of SVR24 and a low probability of sr-RD with peginter-feron alfa-2a/ribavirin