Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Sep 21, 2015; 21(35): 10150-10158
Published online Sep 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i35.10150
Natural evolution of hepatitis C virus infection in hemodialysis Tunisian patients and CTLA-4 SNP's
Leila Ksiaa Cheikhrouhou, Yousr Lakhoua-Gorgi, Imen Sfar, Salwa Jendoubi-Ayed, Houda Aouadi, Mouna Makhlouf, Khaled Ayed, Taieb Ben Abdallah
Leila Ksiaa Cheikhrouhou, Yousr Lakhoua-Gorgi, Imen Sfar, Salwa Jendoubi-Ayed, Houda Aouadi, Mouna Makhlouf, Khaled Ayed, Taieb Ben Abdallah, Immunology Research Laboratory of Kidney Transplantation and Immunopathology, Laboratoire de Recherche, LR03SP01, Tunis 1006, Tunisia
Leila Ksiaa Cheikhrouhou, Laboratory of Immunology, Charles Nicolle Hospital, Tunis 1006, Tunisia
Author contributions: Ksiaa Cheikhrouhou L performed the majority of experiments and wrote the manuscript; Lakhoua-Gorgi Y designed the study and corrected the manuscript; Sfar I was involved in the analytical procedures; Jendoubi-Ayed S, Aouadi H and Makhlouf M participated in the collection of the human material; Ayed K served as scientific advisor and participated in the collection of human material; Ben Abdallah T was the guarantor.
Supported by Grant from the Tunisian Kidney Transplantation Research Laboratory (LR03SP01) Fund.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the ethics committee of Charles Nicolle Hospital (Tunis, Tunisia).
Informed consent statement: All patients gave informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No benefits in any form have been received or will be received from a commercial party related directly or indirectly to the subject of this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at ksiaaleila@yahoo.fr.
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: Leila Ksiaa Cheikhrouhou, PhD, Laboratory of Immunology, Charles Nicolle Hospital, Boulevard 9 Avril, Tunis 1006, Tunisia. ksiaaleila@yahoo.fr
Telephone: +216-98427899 Fax: +216-71561156
Received: January 26, 2015
Peer-review started: January 27, 2015
First decision: February 10, 2015
Revised: April 1, 2015
Accepted: June 9, 2015
Article in press: June 9, 2015
Published online: September 21, 2015
Processing time: 234 Days and 16.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Clinical and virological characteristics of our cohort suggest a nosocomial hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in Tunisian hemodialysis patients with transfusion history as a primary risk factor and a predominance of genotype 1b. No significant association was found for the two CTLA-4 SNPs studied either to spontaneous clearance, persistence or protection against HCV infection. The GG (+49)/(CT60) CTLA-4 haplotype is therefore associated with susceptibility to HCV infection. The study of other susceptibility genes for HCV infection will certainly allow a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of spontaneous viral clearance or persistence of HCV infection.