Clinical usefulness of HCV core antigen assay for the management of patients with chronic hepatitis C.

Aim: The study aimed to evaluate the clinical utility of the chemiluminescent HCV core Ag test compared to viral load assessment in the management of patients with chronic hepatitis C.

Methods: A retrospective study was performed at a tertiary-care infectious diseases hospital on samples collected from anti-HCV positive patients. Seventy-six samples were tested with the Architect HCV core Antigen kit and Cobas AmpliPrep/Cobas Taqman HCV kit.

Detection of resistance to second-line antituberculosis drugs by use of the genotype MTBDRsl assay: a multicenter evaluation and feasibility study.

The rate of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis (TB) has been steadily increasing in countries of the former USSR. The availability of rapid and reliable methods for the detection of drug resistance to second-line drugs is vital for adequate patient management. We evaluated the performance of the Genotype MTBDRsl assay compared to that of phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (Becton Dickinson Bactec MGIT 960 system) with a test panel of 200 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates at four sites in Eastern Europe.

Polymorphisms and resistance mutations in the protease and reverse transcriptase genes of HIV-1 F subtype Romanian strains.

Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of resistance mutations in the genome of HIV-1 F subtype strains isolated from Romanian antiretroviral (ARV) treatment-naïve patients and to assess the phylogenetic relatedness of these strains with other HIV-1 strains.

Methods: Twenty-nine HIV-1 strains isolated from treatment-naïve adolescents (n=15) and adults (n=14) were included in this study. Resistance genotyping was performed by using Big Dye Terminator chemistry provided by the ViroSeq Genotyping System.