CD 30 In Hepatitis C Virus-Associated Chronic Liver Disease In Egypt: Relation To Disease Activity

¹Howayda Hassoba, ¹Amal Fathy, ¹Hanaa Fahmy, ¹Amal Sayed, ²Abdel-Hamid Serwah, ²Fawzy Attia, ³Osama El-Okda

Departments of ¹Clinical Pathology, ²Medicine and ³Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt.

A constant feature of HCV infection is its chronicity in more than 50% of patients. T helper 2 (Th2) response could be responsible for this chronicity. Serum levels of CD30, a glycoprotein secreted by Th2 cells, was investigated in 78 hepatitic C virus positive patients; 22 had CH-C, 19 had cirrhotic livers and 19 HCC complications (n=60) as compared to 18 healthy controls. Serum CD30 levels were significantly higher in the 3 diseased groups as compared to the controls (p=0.002, p=0.000, and p=0.01 in CH-C, cirrhosis and HCC, respectively). High CD30 levels (>22 U/ml) were significantly associated with liver transaminases (p=0.001), liver histological score (p=0.001), schistosomiasis (p=0.006), low haemoglobin (p=0.006), and low platelets count (p=0.002). In conclusions, the marked increase in CD30 level reflects the possible role of Th2 response in HCV chronicity. CD30 assay is an easy, non-invasive test to assess disease severity and progression. The unexpected association between CD30 and schistosomiasis raise the possibility of common immune mediated mechanism (s).