[Acute renal failure secondary to DRESS syndrome].

We report here the case of a 63-year-old man, diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, who presented fever, weakness, diarrhea, chest, limbs and face erythema 20 days after starting of therapy with salazopyrin; these symptoms only partially and temporarily subsided after early drug withdrawal. The subsequent intake of mesalazine during acute colitis, after 48 hours, determined a sever relapse characterized by high fever, general malaise, diffuse morbilliform rash on the trunk, face and limbs with visceral involvement (acute renal and hepatic injury). At this time the diagnosis of "Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms", or DRESS, was done according to "Regiscar" criteria.

Prognostic and diagnostic value of des-γ-carboxy prothrombin in liver cancer.

Des-γ-carboxy prothrombin (DCP) is an abnormal prothrombin induced by the absence of vitamin K₂ that is increased in the serum of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In hepatoma cells, genetic alterations, membrane receptors, the inability to uptake labeled low-density lipoprotein, cytoskeletal changes and hepatocyte cytoplasmic transfers involved in vitamin K metabolism could play an important role in producing detectable DCP serum levels. Serum DCP was found to have a sensitivity ranging from 48% to 62%, a specificity of 81% to 98% and a diagnostic accuracy of 59% to 84% for detecting HCC.

A multidisciplinary therapeutic approach for reducing the risk of psychiatric side effects in patients with chronic hepatitis C treated with pegylated interferon α and ribavirin.

Goals: To evaluate the effectiveness of psychiatric counseling in reducing the rate of development of psychiatric side effects of antiviral therapy with interferon-α and ribavirin among study participants compared with standard clinical monitoring alone.

Background: Interferon-α is used to treat chronic hepatitis C. Interferons may induce adverse events that usually, but not always, reverse within a few days after the end of therapy.

Epoetin alpha improves the response to antiviral treatment in HCV-related chronic hepatitis.

Background: The conventional antiviral treatment of chronic hepatitis related to hepatitis C virus (HCV) often leads to anemia. In this case, it is necessary to reduce ribavirin dose or stop treatment, thus reducing the rate of sustained virological response.

Aim: We investigated whether epoetin alpha administration improves treatment adherence and leads to higher percentage of response at the end of therapy and sustained virological response.