Potential new hepatitis C therapy

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 54, No. 2, March 2012, Page 95 News

UBC researchers have identified a potential new therapy approach for hepatitis C. Recognizing that HCV is constantly mutating, making it difficult to develop antiviral therapies that target the virus itself, researchers de­cided to take a new approach, developing an inhibitor that decreases the size of host fat droplets in liver cells and stops HCV from taking residence, multiplying, and infecting other cells.

This approach, detailed in the journal PLoS Pathogens (published online 5 January 2012 at www.plospathogens.org), blocks the lifecycle of the virus so that it cannot spread and cause further damage to the liver. 

The use of this technique to curb the replication of HCV could translate into similar therapies for other related re-emerging viruses that can cause serious and life-threatening infections in humans, such as dengue virus.

. Potential new hepatitis C therapy. BCMJ, Vol. 54, No. 2, March, 2012, Page(s) 95 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply