Interesting work that shows that the effects of naps treatment are not caused by immunostimulatory effects on hepatocytes or other potential cytokine secreting liver cell components.
It has a few further interesting new data in it that show that rep 2139 accumulates over several month to a high concentration of 50 umol, probably causing some tocicity, while the new 2165 reaches only 10 umol, a tolerable concentration.
The notion, that the apparantly antiviral effects of the naps must therefore be caused indirectly by the dramatic reduction of the plasma concentration of circulating surface antigen was mentioned in the press release.
However, this might not be the true mechanism behind the naps effect. One has to very seriously consider the possibility that the ongoing accumulation of non secreted surface antigen in both infected and integrated cells will couse severe cellular stress, sensitizing these cells to apoptosis and also eliciting some of the innate cellular antiviral defenses available to hepatocytes themselves. Furthermore this presensitizing might well intensify the response to external t cell related cytokine attacks, leading to accelerated clearness of cells with reduced robustness.