Open Access

ARTICLE

Serum cytokine levels as putative prognostic markers in the progression of chronic HCV hepatitis to cirrhosis

Susan Costantini¹, Francesca Capone¹, Eliana Guerriero¹, Patrizia Maio², Giovanni Colonna³, Giuseppe Castello¹

1 Centro Ricerche Oncologiche di Mercogliano (CROM) “Fiorentino Lo Vuolo”, Mercogliano (AV), Italy
2 Divisione di Malattie Infettive, Ospedale San Giuseppe Moscati, Avellino, Italy
3 Dipartimento di Biochimica e Biofisica & Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale di Scienze Computazionali e Biotecnologiche, Seconda Università di Napoli, Napoli, Italy

* Corresponding Author: S. Costantini,

European Cytokine Network 2010, 21(4), 251-256. https://doi.org/10.1684/ecn.2010.0214

Accepted 09 September 2010;

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection can present as an acute manifestation, and can lead to severecomplications such as chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). It represents a globalhealth problem because there is no vaccine currently available. Cytokines play an important role in viralclearance, infection control, inflammation, regeneration and fibrosis, and also are implicated in the pathologicalprocesses occurring in the liver during viral infection. Immunological markers of chronic HCV hepatitis pro-gression as compared to cirrhosis and HCC would be extremely useful, particularly for distinguishing betweenthe molecules produced during HCV-induced chronic inflammation and those secreted during cirrhosis andHCC. In this work, we evaluated the serum levels of several cytokines, chemokines and growth factors in30 patients affected by chronic HCV (HC), 30 patients affected by HCV-related cirrhosis (LC) and 20 healthy,control subjects. We used a multiplex biometric ELISA-based immunoassay in order to identify molecules thatmight be useful for monitoring the progression of HCV to liver cirrhosis and, possibly, to cancer. Our resultsshow that some pro-inflammatory molecules are significantly up-regulated, and play a role as immunologicalmarkers in the intermediate steps towards liver cancer, and that hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a specificmarker of liver cirrhosis. Finally, these data will be used to define a cytokinome profile, which might proveuseful for studies involving the transition of chronic inflammation to neoplastic processes.

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