Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients With High Peripheral Blood Eosinophil Counts Have Better Predicted Improvement in 6MWD After Rehabilitation: A PRELIMINARY STUDY.

Purpose: The objective of this investigation was to determine whether chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients with high blood eosinophil (EOS) counts had better improvement in 6-min walk test (6MWT) after pulmonary rehabilitation (PR).

Methods: Fifty COPD patients were randomly assigned to either the rehabilitation group (RG) or the control group (CG). Patients in the RG (8 wk PR + routine medication) and the CG (routine medication) were followed for 32 wk.

[Screening of proteins interacting with hepatitis C virus NS3 from T7-phage display library].

Objective: To screen and identify proteins that interact with hepatitis C virus NS3 by means of T7-phage display system.

Methods: Hepatitis C virus NS3 was expressed by prokaryotic expression and used as a selected molecule to biopan the T7 select human liver cDNA library; the selected positive clones were identified using DNA sequencing and analyzed with BLAST program in GenBank.

Results: After BLAST analysis in all the positive clones, the proteins which interacted with the hepatitis C virus NS3 were found to be serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade A, member 1 (SERPINA1) and cyclophilin-LC.