Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection causes a global health problem. WHO reported that Two billion individuals worldwide have been infected with HBV. Chronic HBV carriers are about Three hundred and fifty million individuals. About 600,000 die due to either acute or chronic infections of HBV every year. Almost 90% of children infected and 10% of young adults with HBV develop chronic infection. In Egypt, the most prevalent genotype is four1.
Aim of work: We aimed to investigate serum levels of IP-10 and IFN-γ in cirrhotic and non-cirrhotic in chronic HBV infected patients. A total of 53 chronic HBV infected patients and 25 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Mean serum IP-10 levels were higher in patients than healthy controls and cirrhotic patients had higher IP-10 than non-cirrhotic patients (457 vs 236 pg/ml; p< 0.005), Mean IFN-γ levels of cirrhotic patients had higher IFN-γ than non-cirrhotic patients (35 vs 8 pg/ml; p< 0.005). Interestingly, IFN-γ levels correlated with HBV DNA level (r= -0.692, p= 0.0001*).
In conclusion: IP-10 and IFN-γ may be used to predict cirrhosis in chronic HBV infected patients.