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Introduction. Dual antiviral therapy with pegylated interferon alfa-2a and ribavirin leads do sustained elimination of hepatitis C virus infection in over 50% patients with genotypes 1 and 4 and in over 80% with genotypes 2 and 3. In addition to genotype, for predicting success of therapy, important factors are baseline HCV RNA level, age, sex, stage of fibrosis, insulin resistance, degree of fat in liver, and patient’s weight and genetics. Also, adherence to therapy could be a very important factor associated with success of therapy. Objective. The aim of this study was to assess importance of therapy adherence and reduced doses of pegylated interferon alfa-2a and ribavirin on sustained virological response. Methods. One hundred and sixteen patients with chronic hepatitis C were analyzed. Sustained virological response was analyzed in relation to whether the patients received a full cumulative dose of pegylated interferon alfa-2a, a full cumulative dose of pegylated interferon alfa-2a and ribavirin, and a full cumulative dose of pegylated interferon alfa-2a and at least 60% the expected cumulative dose of ribavirin. Results. At the end of the follow-up period, sustained virological response was achieved in 26 (96.3%) patients who received full cumulative dose of pegylated interferon alfa-2a and in 66 (74.2%) who did not (p

Introduction. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is one of the main causes of chronic liver disease worldwide. Pegylated interferon alfa-2a or 2b (PEG IFN alfa-2a or 2b) and ribavirin (RBV) represent a standard treatment of chronic hepatitis C (CHC). Sustained virological response (SVR), defined as continued undetectable HCV RNA 24 weeks after completion of treatment, is universally considered as an indicator of treatment efficacy. Objective. The aim of this study was to determine efficacy and safety of PEG IFN alfa-2a and RBV treatment in patients with CHC in Serbia. Methods. One hundred seventy-six patients with CHC were included in this multicenter trial from 8 reference centers in Serbia. The patients were treated with standard PEG IFN alfa- 2a and RBV protocol. We performed the following virological testing: anti-HCV (ELISA), HCV RNK (quantitative PCR), HCV genotype (type-specific PCR), HBsAg, anti-HBs, anti-HBc and anti-HIV (ELISA). Histological activity and the degree of fibrosis were determined according to the Metavir scoring system. Potential predictors for achieving SVR were evaluated using multivariable logistic regression analysis. Results. Of the treated patients with CHC 65.9% were male, and 60.2% of them aged over 40 years. Of the treated patients 68.2% had infection over 5 years, 63% had HCV RNA >400.000 IU/mL, 76.1% had HCV G1/4, and 60.1% had a mild to moderate liver fibrosis. SVR was achieved in 78.9% of patients (G1/4 79.1%; G2/3 78.1%). The factors that indicated a poorer efficacy of the treatment were age >40 (p

Different types of interferon are widely used to treat hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Results obtained in vitro suggest that interferon inhibits internal ribosome entry site (IRES)-mediated translation of the HCV genome. To elucidate the possible effect of the nucleotide sequence of IRES on therapy outcome, we compared HCV isolates from patients with sustained response and non-response to interferon/ribavirin combination therapy. In 56 analyzed HCV isolates, nucleotide changes appeared strictly in the stem-loop IIIb region, the stem part from 243 nt to 248 nt, and the polypyrimidine-II region. The natural sequence variability of IRES in isolates of genotype 3a was significantly higher than in isolates of genotype 1b (p < 0.05). The average number of nucleotide changes in genotype 3a correlated with response to therapy (p < 0.05).

In this study we investigate the constraints on probability distribution of grammatical forms within morphological paradigms of Serbian language, where paradigm is specified as a coherent set of elements with defined criteria for inclusion. Thus, for example, in Serbian all feminine nouns that end with the suffix "a" in their nominative singular form belong to the third declension, the declension being a paradigm. The notion of a paradigm could be extended to other criteria as well, hence, we can think of noun cases, irrespective of grammatical number and gender, or noun gender, irrespective of case and grammatical number, also as paradigms. We took the relative entropy as a measure of homogeneity of probability distribution within paradigms. The analysis was performed on 116 morphological paradigms of typical Serbian and for each paradigm the relative entropy has been calculated. The obtained results indicate that for most paradigms the relative entropy values fall within a range of 0.75 - 0.9. Nonhomogeneous distribution of relative entropy values allows for estimating the relative entropy of the morphological system as a whole. This value is 0.69 and can tentatively be taken as an index of stability of the morphological system.