Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 14, 2016; 22(38): 8509-8518
Published online Oct 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i38.8509
TM6SF2 E167K variant predicts severe liver fibrosis for human immunodeficiency/hepatitis C virus co-infected patients, and severe steatosis only for a non-3 hepatitis C virus genotype
Caterina Sagnelli, Marco Merli, Caterina Uberti-Foppa, Hamid Hasson, Anna Grandone, Grazia Cirillo, Stefania Salpietro, Carmine Minichini, Mario Starace, Emanuela Messina, Patrizia Morelli, Emanuele Miraglia Del Giudice, Adriano Lazzarin, Nicola Coppola, Evangelista Sagnelli
Caterina Sagnelli, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine and Surgery, F. Magrassi e A. Lanzara, Second University of Naples, 80131 Naples, Italy
Marco Merli, Caterina Uberti-Foppa, Hamid Hasson, Stefania Salpietro, Emanuela Messina, Patrizia Morelli, Adriano Lazzarin, Department of InfectiousDiseases, Vita-Salute University, San Raffaele ScientificInstitute, 20127 Milan, Italy
Anna Grandone, Grazia Cirillo, Emanuele Miraglia Del Giudice, Department of Pediatrics, Second University of Naples, 80131 Naples, Italy
Nicola Coppola, Carmine Minichini, Mario Starace, Evangelista Sagnelli, Department of Mental Health and Public Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Second University of Naples, 80131 Naples, Italy
Author contributions: Sagnelli C, Grandone A, Coppola N, Sagnelli E made substantial contributions to the conception and design, drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and final approval of the version to be published; Merli M, Cirillo G, Salpietro S, Messina E, Morelli P, Coppola N collected the data, and final approval of the version to be published; Uberti-Foppa C, Hasson H, Miraglia Del Giudice E, Lazzarin A revised the article critically for important intellectual content, and made final approval of the version to be published; Minichini C and Starace M performed laboratory analyses.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors of the manuscript declare that they have no conflict of interest in connection with this paper.
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: Dr. Evangelista Sagnelli, Professor, Department of Mental Health and Public Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Second University of Naples, Via L. Armanni 5, 80131 Naples, Italy. evangelistasagnelli@libero.it
Telephone: +39-81-5666719 Fax: +39-81-5666207
Received: June 21, 2016
Peer-review started: June 22, 2016
First decision: July 13, 2016
Revised: August 6, 2016
Accepted: August 23, 2016
Article in press: August 23, 2016
Published online: October 14, 2016
Processing time: 113 Days and 10.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The transmembrane 6 superfamily member 2 (TM6SF2) E167K variant has been identified as an independent predictor of severe liver steatosis in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related chronic hepatitis (CH) lacking human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. We analyzed the impact of the TM6SF2 E167K variant on the liver histology of 167 HIV/HCV co-infected patients with CH. The TM6SF2 E167K variant was found to be an independent predictor of severe fibrosis, while an independent association with severe steatosis was demonstrated only for patients with a non-3 HCV genotype.