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World J Gastroenterol. Mar 28, 2018; 24(12): 1312-1320
Published online Mar 28, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i12.1312
Serum interleukin-34 level can be an indicator of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection
Yin-Qiu Wang, Wen-Jun Cao, Yu-Feng Gao, Jun Ye, Gui-Zhou Zou
Yin-Qiu Wang, Wen-Jun Cao, Yu-Feng Gao, Jun Ye, Gui-Zhou Zou, Department of Infectious Disease, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230601, Anhui Province, China
Author contributions: Wang YQ and Cao WJ contributed to the literature search and writing of the manuscript; Ye J, Zou GZ and Gao YF contributed to the original idea, as well as the polishing and final proof of the manuscript.
Supported by Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province, No. 1608085MH164.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Biomedical Ethics Committee of the Anhui Medical University.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at aygyf@126.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
STROBE statement: The guidelines of the STROBE Statement have been adopted.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yu-Feng Gao, MAMS, Professor, Department of Infectious Disease, Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, 678 Furong Road, Economic and Technological Development District, Hefei 230601, Anhui Province, China. aygyf@126.com
Telephone: +86-551-63869420 Fax: +86-551-63869400
Received: January 21, 2018
Peer-review started: January 22, 2018
First decision: February 3, 2018
Revised: February 11, 2018
Accepted: February 26, 2018
Article in press: February 26, 2018
Published online: March 28, 2018
Processing time: 64 Days and 2.6 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

It is generally believed that the persistence of inflammation plays an important role in the progression of liver fibrosis. Previous studies have shown that interleukin (IL)-34 is an inflammatory cytokine involved in the induction of activation of profibrogenic macrophages, which is associated with the severity of liver fibrosis and inflammation in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Research motivation

in order to be helpful to demonstrate the mechanism of liver fibrosis from the perspective of inflammation and provide a new direction for the search of potential new serological diagnostic fibrosis indicators, we investigated the relationship between IL-34 and liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.

Research objectives

This study aimed to investigate whether serum IL-34 levels are correlated with hepatic inflammation and fibrosis in patients with chronic HBV infection.

Research methods

In this study, serum IL-34 levels of 19 healthy controls and 175 patients with chronic HBV infection undergoing biopsy were analyzed.

Research results

We found that the serum IL-34 levels were different among phases of chronic HBV infection and stages of inflammation and fibrosis. We also thought that the serum IL-34 level has potential to diagnose liver fibrosis through comparative analysis of the diagnostic value of IL-34 and other diagnostic methods, except for pathological diagnosis.

Research conclusions

Serum IL-34 level has the potential to be a new indicator of liver inflammation and fibrosis in patients with chronic HBV infection.

Research perspectives

The diagnostic accuracy of serum IL-34 level is not ideal at present. Thus, we can try combining IL-34 with any of other scores and/or with any clinical variable in order to obtain a new "score" with enhanced diagnostic accuracy. Another approach is to increase the sample size for testing.