186,156 research outputs found
Understanding the mechanisms of fibrogenesis in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients: Implications for clinical practice
No full textHIV/HCV coinfection is associated with accelerated progressive liver disease. Understanding the pathogenesis of liver fibrosis remains crucial to improving the global management of this patient population. This review will mainly focus on the mechanisms involved in the faster progression of liver fibrosis seen in HIV/HCV coinfection, which is caused by a multiplicity of complex factors including virus features, the immune system, interactions between viruses and the immune response, the direct effects of HIV on hepatocytes, fibrinogenetic/inflammatory mediators, microbial translocation, and metabolic abnormalities. The direct role of viruses as well as chronic inflammation, deterioration of immune status, and the harmful effect of antiretroviral agents may all concur to produce dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. Metabolic abnormalities play an important role in the genesis of hepatic steatosis, which is closely linked to liver fibrosis progression. There is also a link between immunologic and metabolic abnormalities: increased expression of leptin and reduced expression of adiponectin seems to be associated with advanced hepatic injury. New antifibrotic strategies are outlined. Ultimately, sustained virological response to hepatitis C therapy is associated with liver fibrosis regression in patients with HIV/HCV coinfection
General issues on microbial translocation in HIV-infected patients
No full textThe lumen of the gastrointestinal tract is home to an enormous quantity of different bacterial species that thrive in an often symbiotic relationship with the host. It is the principal source of microbial products because of its massive bacterial load. Injury to the immune component of the gastrointestinal mucosal surface, along with damage to the intestinal epithelial microenvironment with its antimicrobial functions, may affect systemic immune activation during the chronic phase of HIV infection through the increased translocation of luminal microbial products. Moreover, microbial translocation, which is defined as "the passage of both viable and nonviable microbes and microbial products such as endotoxin across anatomically intact intestinal barrier", may be a fundamental mechanism through which HIV accelerates progression of chronic viral hepatitis. Improvements in the tools available to microbiota research, and especially advancement of our knowledge in this area may help us in controlling the evolution of HIV disease, although population complexity and diversity between individuals make this challenging
Beyond the gut bacterial microbiota : the gut virome
No full textThe gastrointestinal tract is colonized with a highly different population of bacterial, viral, ad fungal species; viruses are reported to be dominant. The composition of gut virome is closely related to dietary habits and surrounding environment. Host and their intestinal microbes live in a dynamic equilibrium and viruses stimulate a low degree of immune responses without causing symptoms (host tolerance). However, intestinal phages could lead to a rupture of eubiosis and may contribute to the shift from health to disease in humans and animals. Viral nucleic acids and other products of lysis of bacteria serve as pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and could trigger specific inflammatory modulations. At the same time, phages could elicit innate antiviral immune responses. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) operated as innate antiviral immune sensors and their activation triggers signaling cascades that lead to inflammatory response
Dosing of Dolutegravir in TB/HIV Coinfected Patients on Rifampicin : Twice Is (Always) Better Than Once
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The impact of rifaximin in the prevention of bacterial infections in cirrhosis
No full textOBJECTIVE: Bacterial infections are a leading factor in the progression from compensated to decompensated cirrhosis, with consequent worsening of the prognosis, and concerted efforts have been made to reduce infections and improve the survival rate of these patients. We retrospectively investigated the rate of infections in hospitalized cirrhotic patients under treatment with rifaximin.PATIENTS AND METHODS: We enrolled 649 patients whose clinical and personal data, prescribed therapy, microbiological findings and laboratory tests were collected from previous discharge letters and our institution database. The efficacy of rifaximin in preventing several types infection was evaluated by comparing outcomes for rifaximin-treated patients vs patients receiving no antibiotic treatment.RESULTS: The risk of developing selected bacterial infections was significantly lower in patients treated with rifaximin (OR 0.29; 95% CI 0.20-0.40, p < 0.001).CONCLUSIONS: Continuous treatment with rifaximin may prevent bacterial infections in cirrhotic patients
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
