05) HIV co-infection, receipt of liver biopsy, testing for hepatitis B e antigen or HBV DNA, longer duration of HBV infection, more visits to a gastroenterology clinic and more recent health-care contact. When excluding HIV-infected patients, only 10% of patients received HBV treatment. Conclusions:  After the diagnosis of HBV infection,

Sunitinib mouse few patients in our population received laboratory evaluation to determine eligibility for HBV treatment. Furthermore, only a small percentage received HBV treatment. Further research needs to be done to validate these findings in other populations and understand barriers to receiving HBV treatment. “
“Aim:  Infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the leading cause of liver cirrhosis that develops into hepatocellular carcinoma. Previous studies have shown in vitro that lipids within hepatocytes are crucially

important for a series of HCV infection–proliferation–release processes. On the other hand, in the patients with HCV, the serum total cholesterol (Total-C) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels have been reported to be lower. We conducted ABT-263 an epidemiological survey of a large cohort and investigated whether the lower serum lipid levels were caused by a direct or the secondary effects of HCV infection (i.e. hepatic damage or nutritional disorder). Methods:  Among 146 857 participants (male, 34%; female, 66%) undergoing public health examinations between 2002 and 2007 in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, the HCV positive rates determined by HCV antibody/antigen and/or OSBPL9 RNA tests were 1.37% and 0.67% in males and females, respectively. Results:  In addition to Total-C and LDL-C, serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations were also significantly lower in the HCV positive subjects compared with the negative subjects, regardless of sex, age or nutritional state evaluated by body mass index. Multivariate analysis showed that HCV infection was the strongest among the factors to be significantly

associated with the lower level of these lipids. Particularly, the hypolipidemia was also confirmed in the HCV positive subjects with normal aminotransferase levels (alanine aminotransferase ≤30 and aspartate aminotransferase ≤30). Conclusion:  This epidemiological survey in a large Japanese cohort suggests that the HCV infection itself might directly cause hypolipidemia, irrespective of host factors including age, hepatic damage and nutritional state. “
“Hemochromatosis gene (HFE)-associated hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is a genetic predisposition to iron overload and subsequent signs and symptoms of disease that potentially affects approximately 80,000 persons in Australia and almost 1 million persons in the United States. Most clinical cases are homozygous for the Cys282Tyr (C282Y) mutation in the HFE gene, with serum ferritin (SF) concentration >1000 μg/L as the strongest predictor of cirrhosis.