Topic Highlight
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 28, 2016; 22(4): 1367-1381
Published online Jan 28, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i4.1367
Chronic hepatitis C virus infection: Serum biomarkers in predicting liver damage
Pamela Valva, Daniela A Ríos, Elena De Matteo, Maria V Preciado
Pamela Valva, Daniela A Ríos, Elena De Matteo, María V Preciado, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Pathology Division, Hospital de Niños Ricardo Gutiérrez, Buenos Aires C1425EFD, Argentina
Author contributions: Valva P and Preciado MV wrote the paper; Ríos DA and De Matteo E contributed to the literature search and analyzing data.
Supported by Argentine National Agency for Scientific and Technology Promotion, PICT 2012 No. 804; and National Research Council (CONICET, PIP 2014), No. 0035; and a fellowship from the National Agency for Science and Technology Promotion (ANPCyT) to Ríos DA.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Pamela Valva, Elena De Matteo, and Maria V Preciado are members of the CONICET Research Career Program. The authors disclose no financial conflicts of interest.
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: Pamela Valva, PhD, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Pathology Division, Hospital de Niños Ricardo Gutiérrez, Gallo 1330, Buenos Aires C1425EFD, Argentina. valvapamela@yahoo.com
Telephone: +54-11-49629138 Fax: +54-11-49624122
Received: May 15, 2015
Peer-review started: May 19, 2015
First decision: July 14, 2015
Revised: August 4, 2015
Accepted: October 12, 2015
Article in press: October 13, 2015
Published online: January 28, 2016
Processing time: 249 Days and 21 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Liver biopsy represents the gold standard for evaluating liver damage, but identification of non-invasive serum markers that mirror liver injury progression is the actual goal in both adults and children. Over the last few years, several non-invasive markers have been proposed, especially for liver fibrosis diagnosis. In this review, we discuss the role of serum biomarkers for predicting liver impairment in chronic hepatitis C patients.