The impact of hepatitis C virus infection on liver disease in renal transplant recipients

Abstract To assess the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in renal transplant recipients and its impact on posttransplant liver disease, the sera from 176 recipients who had been followed for 1–20 years (mean 8.3 years) were tested for HCV-pecific antibody using enzyme immunoassay. HCV-pecific antibody was detected in 53 patients (30.1%) including 2 patients also positive for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). Among 167 HBsAg-negative patients, the presence of HCV-pecific antibody was associated with an increased incidence of chemically significant hepatitis (70.6% vs. 9.5% in anti-HCV-negative patients, P<0.01). Hepatitis was more likely to be chronic in anti-HCV-positive patients than in anti-HCV-negative patients (P<0.05) Serious liver disease developed in 4 of 51 anti-HCV-positive, HBsAg-negative patients: liver failure causing death in 3 and hepatoma in 1. Liver biopsy specimens from anti-HCV-positive patients showed more aggressive histological lesions compared with those from anti-HCV-negative patients. We conclude that HCV infection is quite prevalent in our renal transplant recipients and plays a major role in posttransplant chronic liver disease.     

67Ga scan for evaluating response to therapy in malignant lymphoma

67Ga scintigrams in a patient with malignant lymphoma before and after chemotherapy are presented. 67Ga did not accumulate in the mostly necrotic mass with some viable cells. Negative uptake of 67Ga might reflect necrosis of the tumor; however, it is difficult to detect some residual tumor cells. Therefore, negative uptake of 67Ga in the mass seen in X-ray CT may not be totally reliable evidence of eradication of viable tumor cells.     

Radiation Therapy in Kimura's Disease

Kimura's disease is a rare disorder which predominantly involves the head and neck region and causes eosinophilia in peripheral blood. It often responds well to corticosteroid therapy but some patients can be resistant; in these patients symptomatic radiation therapy can be of value. We reviewed 10 patients with Kimura's disease who received radiation therapy from 1975 through 1981 in the Department of Radiology, Chiba University Hospital. Nineteen tumors were irradiated and 15 of them locally controlled. in 5 patients, steroid therapy could be withdrawn. for local control, 25 to 30 Gy seemed to be adequate.     

Vitamin B6 biosynthesis and nucleoside effect in the resting cell system of Flavobacterium sp. 238-7

As one of the attempts to find clues on precursors or intermediates of the vitamin B6 biosynthetic pathway, the resting cell system of Flavobacterium sp. 238-7, a bacterium producing a high amount of the vitamin, was employed. Among various compounds tested as an additive to the reaction mixture, L-glutamate and nucleoside derivatives increased the formation of vitamin B6, respectively. The possible mechanism of the participation of these compounds in vitamin B6 biosynthesis is discussed. The identification of vitamin B6 formed in the reaction mixture was done using column chromatography.     

Mechanisms of suppression of renal kallikrein activity in low renin essential hypertension and renoparenchymal hypertension

The mechanism of suppression of renal kallikrein activity in low renin essential hypertensive and renoparenchymal hypertensive patients was investigated in this study. From Sephadex G-200 column chromatography studies, a single kallikrein peak was observed in both kallikrein radioimmunoassay and kininogenase activity in all samples from normal subjects, low renin essential hypertensive and renoparenchymal hypertensive patients, and in purified kallikrein solution. The enzyme-specific activity around the kallikrein peak in all urine samples from each group was significantly lower than that in purified kallikrein, and a significantly lower specific activity was found in both patient groups than was found in normal subjects. Moreover, it was also recognized that the specific activity of kallikrein decreased in all cases with the increase of the molecular weight of kallikrein, and this tendency was observed more obviously in the low renin essential hypertensive and renoparenchymal hypertensive patients than in the normal subjects. These results suggest the presence of a kallikrein-specific inhibitor with a low molecular weight in human urine, although the possibility of a variant form of kallikrein cannot be excluded.