Clinical Core

临床核心的主要目的是建立和维护一个急性丙型肝炎病毒(丙型肝炎病毒)组织信息库。提高对丙型肝炎病毒感染自然恢复的认识对于改进慢性感染的预防和治疗方法是必要的。一个主要的限制是对人类急性感染的罕见认识。我们已经克服了这一障碍，每月跟踪调查感染丙型肝炎病毒的高危人群。通过对丙型肝炎病毒感染的筛查和对急性感染者的仔细监测，我们已经建立了一个急性感染库，免疫学家已经使用该库来增进我们对急性丙型肝炎的了解。在这次竞争性的更新中，临床活动集中在一个临床核心，其目标是招募和 监测丙型肝炎病毒抗体阴性的年轻注射吸毒者，以确定急性感染发生时的临床特征，并建立和维护急性感染储存库，并将资源分配给NIH资助的研究人员。通过实现这些目标，临床核心将对我们理解丙型肝炎的康复做出重大贡献，并实现RFA-AI-04-028的许多目标。

The chief purpose of the Clinical Core is to establish and maintain an acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) tissue repository. Better understanding of spontaneous recovery of HCV infection is necessary to improve methods to prevent and treat chronic infection. A major limitation is the rare recognition of acute infection in humans. We have overcome this obstacle by following persons at risk for HCV infection monthly. By screening for HCV infection and careful monitoring of acutely infected persons, we have established an acute infection repository that has already been used by immunologists to advance our understanding of acute hepatitis C. In this competing renewal, the clinical activities are focused in a Clinical Core whose aims are to recruit and monitor HCV antibody negative young injection drug users, to clinically characterize acute infection when it occurs, and to establish and maintain an acute infection repository and distribute the resources to NIH funded investigators. By accomplishing these aims, the Clinical Core will make a major contribution to our understanding of hepatitis C recovery and achieve many of the objectives of RFA-AI-04-028.