Publications by authors named "Martin W Welker"
Article Synopsis
- The study emphasizes the importance of accurately assessing risks in patients with Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure (ACLF), as it is linked to high short-term mortality, particularly for liver transplant decisions.
- The research found that patients with pulmonary impairment face significantly higher mortality rates, with those experiencing pulmonary failure having an alarming 83.7% mortality within 28 days.
- Adjusting the CLIF-C ACLF score to account for the level of pulmonary impairment can improve the prediction of outcomes, suggesting that both pulmonary failure and mechanical ventilation are critical factors for evaluating the prognosis of ACLF patients.
Article Synopsis
- The study focuses on how the length of antibiotic therapy (AT) impacts liver graft recipients experiencing acute cholangitis due to biliary anastomosis issues.
- Researchers compared outcomes of patients on short AT (less than 7 days) versus long AT (more than 6 days) after treatment through endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERC).
- Results showed no significant differences in recurrent cholangitis rates between the two groups, suggesting that shorter antibiotic courses may be effective for certain patients post-transplant.
Background: The transition from compensated to decompensated liver cirrhosis is a hallmark of disease progression, however, reliable predictors to assess the risk of decompensation in individual patients from routine diagnostics are lacking. Here, we characterize serum levels of cell death-associated markers and routine biochemistry from patients with chronic liver disease with and without decompensation.
Methods: A post-hoc analysis was based on prospectively collected clinical data from 160 patients with chronic liver disease, stably compensated or decompensated at baseline or during follow-up, over a median period of 721 days.
With favourable 5-year survival rates up to 75%, liver transplantation (LT) is the treatment of choice for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Nonetheless, tumour recurrence after LT remains a challenge. The aim of this retrospective study was to develop a predictive score for tumour recurrence after LT by combining clinical parameters with HCC biomarkers (microRNA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground & Aims: Recurrence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection after orthotopical liver transplantation (OLT) is common and associated with reduced graft and patient survival. The protease inhibitor telaprevir may enhance virological response rates in patients after OLT in combination with pegylated interferon-alfa and ribavirin. Pharmacokinetic studies have shown significant drug-drug interactions between telaprevir and immunosuppression (IS), but telaprevir pharmacokinetics in OLT patients with IS are unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Telaprevir and boceprevir are highly selective hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3/4A proteaseinhibitors in phase 3 development. Viral breakthrough during mono- and triple-therapies with PEG-interferon and ribavirin and relapse is associated with resistance.
Objectives: Potential persistence of resistance mutations during long-term follow-up should be analyzed.
Background/aims: Interferon-alpha induces 2'-5'-oligoadenylate synthetase which activates RNase L. Viral RNA is cleaved by RNase L at UU/UA dinucleotides. The clinical relevance of RNase L cleavage for response to an interferon-alpha-based therapy in chronic hepatitis C is unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Telaprevir (VX-950) is an orally active, specifically targeted antiviral therapy for hepatitis C virus (HCV) that has been shown to profoundly reduce plasma HCV RNA in genotype 1 patients. Using a highly sensitive sequencing assay that detects minor populations of viral variants (>or=5%), mutations were identified that conferred low-level (V36M/A, T54A, or R155K/T) or high-level (A156V/T and 36/155) resistance to telaprevir in vitro. We report a detailed kinetic analysis of these variants in 16 patients given telaprevir or telaprevir + pegylated interferon-alpha-2a (PEG-IFN-alpha-2a) for 14 days.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFlaviviridae are evolutionarily related viruses, comprising the hepatitis C virus (HCV), with the non-structural protein 4B (NS4B) as one of the least characterized proteins. NS4B is located in the endoplasmic reticulum membrane and is assumed to be a multifunctional protein. However, detailed structure information is missing.
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