These results suggest that FibroScan is an efficient and simple method for evaluating liver fibrosis in patients with chronic infection, both for HBV and HCV.

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A 37-year-old woman with a history of transphenoidal surgery and gamma knife treatment for prolactinoma was admitted because of pneumoniae with hyponatremia (Na 109 mmol/l). After the careful correction of the serum sodium level within 15 mmol/l/day, the patient developed parkinsonism. MRI of the brain disclosed a signal increase in the bilateral basal ganglias on T2-weighted images, a finding consistent with extrapontine myelinolysis (EPM). Interestingly, the parkinsonism fully disappeared after the replacement therapy of hydrocortisone for adrenal insufficiency due to hypopituitarism, and MRI 5 months later showed complete disappearance of the lesions, indicating the patient had ameliorated from the EPM.

BackgroundAn early virological response (EVR) after the start of interferon (IFN) treatment for chronic hepatitis C leads to a successful virological outcome. To analyze an association between sustained virological response (SVR) and EVR by comparing TaqMan with Amplicor assays in HCV genotype 1-infected patients treated with pegylated (PEG)-IFN alpha-2b plus ribavirin (RBV).MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed a total of 80 HCV genotype 1 patients (39 SVR and 41 non-SVR patients), who received an enough dosage and a complete 48-week treatment of PEG-IFN alpha-2b plus RBV. Serum HCV RNA levels were measured by both TaqMan and Amplicor assays for each patients at Weeks 2, 4, 8 and 12 after the start of the antiviral treatment.ResultsOf the 80 patients with undetectable HCV RNA by Amplicor, 17 (21.3%) patients were positive for HCV RNA by TaqMan at Weeks 12. The quantification results showed that no significant difference in the decline of HCV RNA level between TaqMan and Amplicor 10-fold method assays within the initial 12 weeks of the treatment was found. However, the qualitative analysis showed significant differences of the positive predictive rates for SVR were found between TaqMan (100% at weeks 4 and 100% at weeks 8) and Amplicor (80.0% and 69.6%, respectively).ConclusionsThe COBAS TaqMan HCV assay is very useful for monitoring HCV viremia during antiviral treatment to predict a SVR in HCV genotype 1 patients.