Bypass grafts and cell transplant in heart failure with low ejection fraction.

From June 2004 to October 2007, 34 patients with chronic heart failure and low ejection fraction underwent surgical revascularization; 23 received bypass grafting plus transplantation of bone marrow-derived stem cells (study group) and 11 had revascularization only (control group). The stem cells were implanted into nonviable myocardial areas, bypass grafting was performed in viable myocardial areas. In the study group, the ejection fraction increased from the baseline 26.

Hepatitis C virus F protein sequence reveals a lack of functional constraints and a variable pattern of amino acid substitution.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important human pathogen that affects 170 million people worldwide. The HCV genome is an RNA molecule that is approximately 9.6 kb in length and encodes a polyprotein that is cleaved proteolytically to generate at least 10 mature viral proteins.

Evidence of intratypic recombination in natural populations of hepatitis C virus.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has high genomic variability and, since its discovery, at least six different types and an increasing number of subtypes have been reported. Genotype 1 is the most prevalent genotype found in South America. In the present study, three different genomic regions (5'UTR, core and NS5B) of four HCV strains isolated from Peruvian patients were sequenced in order to investigate the congruence of HCV genotyping for these three genomic regions.