Ulrich Bienzle, Matthias Günther, Ruth Neuhaus, Pierre Vandepapeliere, Jens Vollmar, Andreas Lun, Peter Neuhaus – 7 March 2007 – Patients who undergo transplantation for hepatitis B virus (HBV)‐related diseases are treated indefinitely with hepatitis B hyperimmunoglobulin (HBIG) to prevent endogenous HBV reinfection of the graft. Active immunization with standard hepatitis B vaccines in these patients has recently been reported with conflicting results.

Laurie D. Deleve, Xiangdong Wang, Gary C. Kanel, Yoshiya Ito, Nancy W. Bethea, Margaret K. McCuskey, Zoltan A. Tokes, Jeffrey Tsai, Robert S. McCuskey – 7 March 2007 – This study examined the role of decreased nitric oxide (NO) in the microcirculatory obstruction of hepatic sinusoidal obstruction syndrome (SOS). SOS was induced in rats with monocrotaline. Monocrotaline caused hepatic vein NO to decrease by 30% at 24 hours and by 70% at 72 hours; this decrease persisted throughout late SOS.

Scott K. Fung, Anna S. F. Lok – 7 March 2007

Shiou‐Hwei Yeh, Ming‐Wei Lin, Shu‐Fen Lu, Dai‐Chen Wu, Shih‐Feng Tsai, Ching‐Yi Tsai, Ming‐Yang Lai, Hey‐Chi Hsu, Ding‐Shinn Chen, Pei‐Jer Chen – 7 March 2007 – Allelic loss of chromosome 4q is one of the most frequent genetic aberrations found in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and suggests the presence of putative tumor suppressor genes within this region. To precisely define the region containing these tumor suppressor genes for further positional cloning, we tried a detailed deletion mapping strategy in 149 HCCs by using 49 microsatellite markers covering 4q12 ≈ 25.

David Durantel, Sandra Carrouée‐Durantel, Bettina Werle‐Lapostolle, Marie‐Noëlle Brunelle, Christian Pichoud, Christian Trépo, Fabien Zoulim – 7 March 2007 – Resistance of hepatitis B virus (HBV) to antivirals has become a major clinical problem. Our objective was to develop a new method for the cloning of naturally occurring HBV genomes and a phenotypic assay capable of assessing HBV drug susceptibility and DNA synthesis capacity in vitro.

7 March 2007

Robert Thimme, Hans‐Christian Spangenberg, Hubert E. Blum – 7 March 2007 – Background: Neither previous hepatitis C (HCV) infection nor vaccination with HCV‐derived antigens protects against reinfection. However, HCV infection and vaccination in chimpanzees has been shown to reduce the magnitude and duration of viraemia with re‐challenge. We aimed to establish whether similar immunity could be achieved in man.

Katarína Vajdová, Rolf Graf, Pierre‐Alain Clavien – 7 March 2007

Neil D. Theise – 7 March 2007

Hartmut Jaeschke – 7 March 2007 – Microarray technology allows the simultaneous analysis of mRNA expression levels of thousands of genes. In the field of toxicogenomics, this technology could help to identify potentially unsafe compounds based on the changes in mRNA expression patterns they induce. Rodent in vivo and in vitro systems are currently the experimental models of choice for predictive toxicology, especially in early phases of development.