Abstract: TTV is an unenveloped circular single-stranded DNA
virus with a diameter of 30-32 nm that first was described in 1997 in
Japan. TTV was detected in various populations without proven
pathology, including blood donors and in patients with chronic HBV
and HCV hepatitis. The aim of this study was to determine the
prevalence of TTV DNA in Iranian patients with chronic hepatitis B
and C. Viral TTV-DNA was studied in 442 samples (202 with HBV,
138 with HCV and 102 controls) collected from west south of Iran.
All extracted serum DNA was amplified by TTV ORF1 gene specific
primers using the semi nested PCR technique. TTV DNA was
detected in the serum of 8.9% and 10.8% patients with chronic
hepatitis B and C, respectively. Prevalence of TTV-DNA in the serum
of 102 controls was 2.9%. Results showed significant relation of TTV
with HBV and HCV in patients by using T test examination (P
Abstract: Chronic hepatitis B can evolve to cirrhosis and liver
cancer. Interferon is the only effective treatment, for carefully selected
patients, but it is very expensive. Some of the selection criteria are
based on liver biopsy, an invasive, costly and painful medical procedure.
Therefore, developing efficient non-invasive selection systems,
could be in the patients benefit and also save money. We investigated
the possibility to create intelligent systems to assist the Interferon
therapeutical decision, mainly by predicting with acceptable accuracy
the results of the biopsy. We used a knowledge discovery in integrated
medical data - imaging, clinical, and laboratory data. The resulted
intelligent systems, tested on 500 patients with chronic hepatitis
B, based on C5.0 decision trees and boosting, predict with 100%
accuracy the results of the liver biopsy. Also, by integrating the other
patients selection criteria, they offer a non-invasive support for the
correct Interferon therapeutic decision. To our best knowledge, these
decision systems outperformed all similar systems published in the
literature, and offer a realistic opportunity to replace liver biopsy in
this medical context.