[Monitoring patients with chronic hepatitis during and after therapy].

Chronic viral hepatitis C and B are one of the major public health and medical problems. Both viruses cause life threatening liver diseases, i.e.

[Viral hepatitis. Croatian consensus conference--2009].

Summarized text of Croatian Consensus Conference on Viral Hepatitis of 2009 comprises the following chapters: 1) Epidemiology, 2) Clinical Picture, 3) Diagnostic Procedure, 4) Aims of Treatment of Viral Hepatitis, 5) Terminology, 6) Medicaments (6.1. Interferon, 6.

Therapy for unhealed gastrocutaneous fistulas in rats as a model for analogous healing of persistent skin wounds and persistent gastric ulcers: stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157, atropine, ranitidine, and omeprazole.

Objective: This study focused on unhealed gastrocutaneous fistulas to resolve whether standard drugs that promote healing of gastric ulcers may simultaneously have the same effect on cutaneous wounds, and corticosteroid aggravation, and to demonstrate why peptides such as BPC 157 exhibit a greater healing effect. Therefore, with the fistulas therapy, we challenge the wound/growth factors theory of the analogous nonhealing of wounds and persistent gastric ulcers.

Methods: The healing rate of gastrocutaneous fistula in rat (2-mm-diameter stomach defect, 3-mm-diameter skin defect) validates macro/microscopically and biomechanically a direct skin wound/stomach ulcer relation, and identifies a potential therapy consisting of: (i) stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 [in drinking water (10 microg/kg) (12 ml/rat/day) or intraperitoneally (10 microg/kg, 10 ng/kg, 10 pg/kg)], (ii) atropine (10 mg/kg), ranitidine (50 mg/kg), and omeprazole (50 mg/kg), (iii) 6-alpha-methylprednisolone (1 mg/kg) [intraperitoneally, once daily, first application at 30 min following surgery; last 24 h before sacrifice (at postoperative days 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, and 21)].

An experimental model of prolonged esophagitis with sphincter failure in the rat and the therapeutic potential of gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157.

We report a simple novel rat model that combines prolonged esophagitis and parallel sphincters failure. The anti-ulcer gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157, which was found to be stable in gastric juice, and is being evaluated in inflammatory bowel disease trials, is an anti-esophagitis therapy that recovers failed sphincters. Twelve or twenty months after the initial challenge (tubes sutured into sphincters for one week and then spontaneously removed by peristalsis), rats exhibit prolonged esophagitis (confluent hemorrhagic and yellowish lesions, thinner epithelium and superficial corneal layer, with stratification derangement); constantly lowered pressure of both sphincters (assessed by using a water manometer connected to the drainage port of a Foley catheter implanted into the stomach either through esophageal or duodenal incision); and both lower esophageal and pyloric sphincter failure.

The presentation and organization of adaptive cytoprotection in the rat stomach, duodenum, and colon. Dedicated to André Robert the founder of the concept of cytoprotection and adaptive cytoprotection.

Background: Adaptive cytoprotection could be demonstrated in lesion attenuation within the whole gastrointestinal tract, in particular sequences, with onset and duration longer than the initial short-lasting period (i.e. one hour) defined by Robert in the stomach only.

[Factors influencing clinical course of viral hepatitis].

Hepatitis B and C are diseases characterized by a high global prevalence, complex clinical course and limited efficacy of currently available antiviral therapy. Hepatitis B: local factors have a significant influence not only on the disease prevalence but also on the disease course. Vertical transmission of the infection in the areas of high prevalence results in perinatal infection, which universaly leads to the development of chronic disease.

[Viral hepatitis: Croatian consensus statement].

There has been a dramatic improvement in diagnostic procedures and therapy of viral hepatitis in the last 20 years. Improvements in therapy caused an increase in actual cost, however, with significant long-term savings through a decreased cost of treatment of advanced liver disease including liver transplantation. The Croatian National Board for Viral Hepatitis has decided to initiate the organization of consensus conference on viral hepatitis enabling the leading experts in the country to give the best possible recommendations for the diagnosis, prophylaxis and therapy in our circumstances.

Different effect of antiulcer agents on rat cysteamine-induced duodenal ulcer after sialoadenectomy, but not gastrectomy.

The focus was on salivary glands in cysteamine-induced duodenal ulcer and the different effects of antiulcer agents on cysteamine-induced duodenal ulcer in sialoadenectomized but not gastrectomized rats. We tested antiulcer agents on cysteamine-induced duodenal ulcer in rats (agents/kg i.p.