Immunological changes in different patient populations with chronic hepatitis C virus infection

Table 2 Cytokine production by natural killer cell and CD8+ T cells in the peripheral blood from patients with chronic hepatitis C virus with elevated alanine aminotransferase or persistently normal alanine aminotransferase and in healthy individuals

	IL-2	IL-4	IL-5	IL-10	TNF-α	IFN-γ
NK cells
Healthy individuals	400.4 ± 357.4	32.4 ± 23.5	6.3 ± 1.39	5.50 ± 0.23	1301.7 ± 417.3	2739.2 ± 61.2
Chronic HCV with elevated ALT	817.3 ± 316.2	20.2 ± 8.6c	27.9 ± 15.6	9.30 ± 1.63a	3034.3 ± 649.7ac	3268.6 ± 140.4a
HCV carriers with PNALT	1182.3 ± 447.7e	169.5 ± 48.1a	18.3 ± 5.83e	9.70 ± 1.22a	4491.6 ± 148.6b	3231 ± 77.9b
CD8+
Healthy individuals	1944.5 ± 303.9	26.1 ± 6.9	65.5 ± 20.8	18.2 ± 4.9	1369.0 ± 224.5	2608.4 ± 81.2
Chronic HCV with elevated ALT	2440.5 ± 378.3	276.3 ± 98.1a	461.2 ± 213.9a	58.3 ± 15.8ac	3247.4 ± 590.8a	2721.9 ± 78.7
HCV carriers with PNALT	2502.1 ± 238.5e	253.1 ± 95.2a	374.8 ± 171.6a	258.3 ± 71.9e	3895.0 ± 218.3b	2719.7 ± 127.0

Concentrations of cytokines are given in picograms per milliliter (mean ± SD).

^aP < 0.05,

^eP < 0.02,

^bP < 0.001, vs healthy individuals, significantly different;

^cP < 0.05 vs symptomatic individuals, significantly different. HCV: Hepatitis C virus; ALT: Alanine aminotransferase; PNALT: Persistently normal ALT; NK: Natural killer cell; IL-2: Interleukin-2; TNF-α: Tumor necrosis factor α; IFN-γ: Interferon-γ.