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Limited experimental and clinical evidence suggests a potential role for sofosbuvir/daclatasvir in treating COVID19. We aim to evaluate the efficacy of generic sofosbuvir/daclatasvir in treating COVID-19 patients with pneumonia. This multicenter prospective study involved 174 patients with COVID-19. Patients were randomized into two groups. Group A (96 patients) received sofosbuvir (400 mg)/daclatasvir (60 mg) for 14 days in combination with conventional therapy. Group B (78 patients) received conventional therapy alone. Clinical, laboratory, and radiological data were collected at baseline, after 7, 14, and 28 days of therapy. Primary endpoint was rate of clinical/virological cure. A lower mortality rate was observed in group (A) (14% vs 21%, P = 0.07). After 1 month of therapy, no differences were found in rates of ICU admission, oxygen therapy, or ventilation. Additionally, a statistically significant shorter duration of hospital stay (9% vs 12%, P < 0.01) and a faster achievement of PCR negativity at day 14 (84% versus 47%, P < 0.01) were noticed in group (A). Adding sofosbuvir/daclatasvir to conventional therapy of COVID-19 is promising. Their use is associated with shorter hospital stay, faster PCR negativity and may be reduced mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction and objectives: The heterogenous nature of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) motivated this attempt at developing and validating a model based on combined biomarkers for improving early HCC detection. Patients/materials and methods: This study examined 196 patients for an estimation study (104 patients with HCC, 52 with liver cirrhosis and 40 with liver fibrosis) and 122 patients for the validation study (80 patients with HCC, 42 with liver cirrhosis). All patients were positive for hepatitis C virus. Four markers were measured: Midkine and thioredoxin using ELISA, 1-methyladenosine and 1-methylguanosine using a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results were compared with alpha-fetoprotein (AFP). The performance of the model was estimated in BCLC, CLIP and Okuda staging systems of HCC. Results: The model yielded high performance with an area under ROC (AUC) of 0.94 for predicting HCC in patients with liver cirrhosis, compared with AUC of 0.69 for AFP. This model had AUCs of 0.93, 0.94 and 0.94 in patients who had only one single nodule, absent macrovascular invasion and tumor size <2 cm, respectively, compared with AUCs of 0.71, 0.6 and 0.59 for AFP. The model produced AUCs of 0.91 for BCLC (0-A), 0.92 for CLIP (0-1) and 0.94 for Okuda (stage I) compared with AUCs of 0.56, 0.58 and 0.64 for AFP. No significant difference was found between AUC in the estimation and the validation groups. Conclusion: This model may enhance early-stage HCC detection and help to overcome insufficient sensitivity of AFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Percutaneous treatment of simple or hydatid liver cysts is widely used in clinical practice and ethanol is the commonest sclerosant used. Abdominal discomfort and pain commonly occurs after ethanol injection which increase with increased ethanol volume. Purpose To evaluate the safety and efficacy of the combination of tetracycline and ethanol for percutaneous sclerotherapy of either symptomatic simple hepatic cysts or unilocular hepatic hydatid cysts. Patients and methods A total of 34 adult patients with symptomatic simple cyst and 36 unilocular hydatid cysts underwent clinical, laboratory and radiological evaluations followed by diagnostic cyst aspiration. Each was divided into 2 arms. The first arm was treated by ethanol sclerotherapy and the second was treated by combined ethanol and tetracycline sclerotherapy. Results Combined ethanol and tetracycline sclerotherapy was associated with fewer sessions than ethanol sclerotherapy (P = ≤0.001) and higher rate of sustained cyst size reduction on follow up (P = ≤0.001). Also second arm was associated with less pain than alcohol alone due to the beneficial effect of tetracycline. Conclusion: combined ethanol and tetracycline seems to be more effective, non expensive, more sustained action and more comfortable to our patients than single ethanol use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study was to determine the levels ofS. mansoniantigen in different liver fibrosis stages with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) Egyptian patients. A total of 174 CHC patients showing HCV-NS4 antigen and HCV- RNA in their sera were included.S. mansoniantigen was detected in serum using Western blot and ELISA. The levels of interferon-γ (IFN- γ) were determined using ELISA. The 50 kDaS. mansoniantigen discriminated patients infected withS. mansonifrom healthy individuals with 0.93 area under curve (AUC), 92% sensitivity, and 97% specificity. The level ofS. mansoniantigen (μg/ml) was significantly (P< 0.0001) increased with the progression of liver fibrosis stages (26.9 ± 17.5 in F1, 42.1 ± 25.2 in F2, 49.8 ± 30.3 in F3 and 62.2 ± 26.3 μg/mL in F4 liver cirrhosis), 26.9 ± 17.59 in significant fibrosis (F2–F4); 51.2 ± 27.9 in advanced fibrosis (F3–F4). A significant correlation (r = 0.506;P< 0.0001) was shown between the levels of theS. mansoniantigen and the HCV-NS4 antigen. In conclusion, the presence ofS. mansoniantigen in different liver fibrosis stages of CHC patients confirming that concomitant schistosome infection aggravates liver disease. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of α-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) and C-reactive protein (CRP) and develop a predictive score to improve the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). AGP and CRP were measured in serum of 53 HCC patients and 20 liver cirrhosis (LC) patients, in addition to 15 healthy individuals. Area under receiver-operating characteristic curves (AUCs) was used to create a predictive score comprising AGP, CRP, alpha fetoprotein, and albumin. The diagnostic performances of score was determined and compared with AFP alone for the diagnosis of HCC. The combination of AGP, albumin, CRP, and AFP had AUC 0.92 and sensitivity 85% which was higher than AFP alone. The odds ratio of having HCC was 8.4 for AGP, 5.8 for CRP, 12.5 for AFP and 6.5 for albumin. Our score predicted HCC with an OR of 50.6 for HCC. The AUC of score in HCC with single tumor, absent vascular invasion and CLIP score (0–1) were 0.9, 0.9, 0.82, respectively, compared with 0.71, 0.71, 0.68, respectively, for AFP. In conclusion, a non-invasive and simple score based on AGP, CRP, AFP, and albumin could improve the accuracy of HCC diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our objective in the present study was to observe the change in the serum MMP-1 concentration using ELISA in 129 chronic hepatitis C (CHC) (78 non-cirrhotic and 51 with cirrhotic liver) and 50 healthy controls. The values of MMP-1 concentration increased in patients with CHC according to the stage of liver fibrosis. An area under the ROC curves (AUC) of the MMP-1 was 0.98 for discriminating patients with cirrhotic liver from healthy individuals and was 0.78 for discriminating patients with cirrhotic liver from non cirrhotic patients. The diagnostic potential of MMP-1 for discriminating cirrhosis from healthy individuals was very high with 98% sensitivity and 97% efficiency. MMP-1 detected cirrhosis in CHC with 71% sensitivity and 73% efficiency. In Conclusion, measurement of serum MMP-1 is useful for diagnosing liver cirrhosis in CHC patients.