Real-world efficacy and safety of Ledipasvir plus Sofosbuvir and Ombitasvir/Paritaprevir/Ritonavir +/- Dasabuvir combination therapies for chronic hepatitis C: A Turkish experience

Background/Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the real-life efficacy and tolerability of direct-acting antiviral treatments for patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) with/without cirrhosis in the Turkish population.Material and Methods: A total of 4,352 patients with CHC from 36 different institutions in Turkey were enrolled. They received ledipasvir (LDV) and sofosbuvir (SOF)+/- ribavirin (RBV) ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir +/- dasabuvir (PrOD)+/- RBV for 12 or 24 weeks. Sustained virologic response (SVR) rates, factors affecting SVR, safety profile, and hepatocellular cancer (HCC) occurrence were analyzed.Results: SVR12 was achieved in 92.8% of the patients (4,040/4,352) according to intention-to-treat and in 98.3% of the patients (4,040/4,108) according to per-protocol analysis. The SVR12 rates were similar between the treatment regimens (97.2%-100%) and genotypes (95.6%-100%). Patients achieving SVR showed a significant decrease in the mean serum alanine transaminase (ALT) levels (50.90 +/- 54.60 U/L to 17.00 +/- 14.50 U/L) and model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) scores (7.51 +/- 4.54 to 7.32 +/- 3.40) (p<0.05). Of the patients, 2 were diagnosed with HCC during the treatment and 14 were diagnosed with HCC 37.0 +/- 16.0 weeks post-treatment. Higher initial MELD score (odds ratio [OR]: 1.92, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.22-2.38; p=0.023]), higher hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA levels (OR: 1.44, 95% CI: 1.31-2.28; p=0.038), and higher serum ALT levels (OR: 1.38, 95% CI: 1.21-1.83; p=0.042) were associated with poor SVR12. The most common adverse events were fatigue (12.6%), pruritis (7.3%), increased serum ALT (4.7%) and bilirubin (3.8%) levels, and anemia (3.1%).Conclusion: LDV/SOF or PrOD +/- RBV were effective and tolerable treatments for patients with CHC and with or without advanced liver disease before and after liver transplantation. Although HCV eradication improves the liver function, there is a risk of developing HCC.Turkish Association for the Study of The Liver (TASL

Optimum Nyquist filters with controlled time and frequency characteristics

A design procedure is presented for pulse shaping filters based on the eigenfilter method. This method presents great flexibility for the control of the tail decay and stopband attenuation of the pulse shaping filters. A variety of optimum filters can be designed which are better than raised cosine filters both in time and frequency

Blind channel identification methods and channel order estimation

n this paper, we consider three blind channel estimation methods. Cross-relation (CR), subspace (SS) and least squares smoothing (J-LSS) methods are compared for single-input multi-output (SIMO) systems. In contrast to the previous works, we evaluate the practical MSE performances of these methods for short data lengths and random channels when the number of channels is greater than two. Some previously unknown characteristics of these methods are presented. A novel method for blind channel order estimation is presented and it is integrated to the SS and CR methods. The performance of this approach is compared with different methods. It is shown that the new approach has significantly better performance and it is robust to a variety of factors in practical applications

Block-based methods for the reconstruction of finite-length signals from nonuniform samples

Two novel block-based algorithms are presented for the reconstruction of uniform samples given the nonuniform samples. The first algorithm uses a sinc interpolator whereas the second one uses a DFT-based interpolator. It is shown that the proposed algorithms are stable and the error due to noise and sampling jitter is bounded by the corresponding error norms of noise and jitter, respectively. We show that both of the block-based algorithms provide nearly perfect reconstruction for a class of practically time and bandlimited signals. Boundary effects are considered and single and multiblock processing is discussed. A modified block-based algorithm is developed by using the windowing technique in order to improve the mean-squared error (MSE) performance for nonbandlimited signals. It is shown that this algorithm performs better than a group of alternative algorithms, including Yen's third algorithm, for a variety of signal, noise, and sampling grids

Klasik ve Modern Yön Kestirimi

lassical and Modern Direction of Arrival Estimation contains both theory and practice of direction finding by the leading researchers in the field. This unique blend of techniques used in commercial DF systems and state-of-the art super-resolution methods is a valuable source of information for both practicing engineers and researchers. Key topics covered are: Classical methods of direction findingPractical DF methods used in commercial systemsCalibration in antenna arraysArray mapping, fast algorithms and wideband processingSpatial time-frequency distributions for DOA estimationDOA estimation in threshold regionHigher order statistics for DOA estimationLocalization in sensor networks and direct position estimatio

ISI-free pulse shaping filters for receivers with or without a matched filter

We present a design procedure to obtain pulse shaping filters which result intersymbol interference (ISI) free transmit signals as well as matched filtered received signals. Such kind of pulse shaping filters presents flexibility in the design of the receiver systems. The design procedure results symmetric filters as opposed to the filters proposed in previous works. Design parameters can be used to trade the stopband attenuation or fast decay in time for doubly ISI-free property. The performance of the filters is tested in a V26ter modem in comparison with the standard raised-cosine filters. Both filters have almost identical performances in terms of MSE at the equalizer input

Causal and stable FIR-IIR Wiener filters

IIR Wiener filters are the optimum filters with minimum MSE. In general, these filters are noncausal and their causal counterparts have larger MSE. In this paper, we propose causal and stable FIR-IIR Wiener filters which have the same MSE performance when the FIR part is sufficiently long. FIR-IIR Wiener filter employs the best delay LS inverse filter to model the noncausal part of the IIR Wiener filter. We have compared the MSE performances of IIR causal and noncausal, FIR best delay and FIR-IIR Wiener filters, by using AR(1) and AR(2) processes

A new time-domain deconvolution algorithm and its applications

Recently a new time-domain method has been presented for deconvolution [1]. This multidimensional method completely eliminates the problems of the previous methods in one dimension and covers a reasonable part of the solutions in multidimensions. In this paper, we present some of the properties of this method. We will especially focus on the frequency domain behaviour of the algorithm as well as the performance under numerical errors and errors due to noise. In addition we will present examples of the applications including blind deconvolution with a modified NAS-RIF algorithm