Tag Archives: Hepatitis

June 2023—For HIV and HCV algorithmic testing, the workflow options have risks to consider. Molecular testing performed as an automatic reflex on the same sample used for the serologic testing risks carryover contamination, and requiring a dedicated sample for the molecular assay risks incomplete testing.

July 2022—Thanks to more than two years’ experience with SARS-CoV-2, perhaps at no point in U.S. history has the general public been as aware of antigen and PCR testing, and the difference between them, as it is now.

April 2022—Don’t be afraid of livers. Maryam K. Pezhouh, MD, offered that advice in a CAP21 presentation on autoimmune hepatitis, primary biliary cholangitis, and overlap syndrome, part of a session on common queries in liver pathology. “You don’t need to know everything when you’re looking at the liver,” said Dr. Pezhouh, associate clinical professor of pathology at the University of California, San Diego. “But you need to know what your clinician and your patient are asking.”

April 2018—If you were asked to pick a place on the map where problems with detecting a mutant strain of an infectious disease would likely come to light, the capital of Nebraska might not be your first guess.

April 2013—Treatment for hepatitis C virus infection turned a corner in 2011 when direct-acting antiviral inhibitors were approved and combined with dual therapy—pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Cure rates shot up from about 45 percent to 70 to 75 percent. With antivirals that are even more potent in late-stage clinical trials now, “Use of oral antiviral therapy without interferon appears to be a real possibility for the near future,” said Mitchell L. Shiffman, MD, director of the Liver Institute of Virginia at Bon Secours Health System in Richmond and Newport News, in an Association for Molecular Pathology session at the 2012 annual meeting, where he spoke about viral load monitoring for HCV.