This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Immune-cell microparticles a potential diagnostic tool for chronic liver disease
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Cell-derived microparticles may be useful in the assessment of hepatic inflammation among patients with chronic liver disease, according to recent results.
Using flow cytometry, researchers compared immune cell microparticles (MP) in the bloodstreams of 67 patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) or NASH, 42 patients with chronic HCV and 44 controls. The purpose of the study was to determine predictive value of these profiles for severity of inflammation and fibrosis.
Both patients with chronic HCV and those with NAFL/NASH had increased CD4+ MP compared with controls (40% increase for HCV and 29% for NAFL/NASH), as well as increased CD8+ MP (26% for HCV and 56% for NAFL/NASH). Patients with chronic HCV whose ALT levels were higher than 100 IU/L had significantly more CD4+ MP than both controls and HCV patients with ALT levels below 40 IU/L. Among NAFL/NASH patients, CD4+ MP were slightly but significantly higher than controls for those with both high and low ALT levels. CD4+ and CD8+ MP were not found to effectively discriminate between the two illnesses, with an AUROC of 0.71 for chronic HCV and 0.59 for NAFL/NASH.
NAFL/NASH patients also indicated increases in invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT) and CD14+ MP, with subsequent AUROC values of >.99 for CD14+ and 0.97 for iNKT MP when compared with patients with chronic HCV, who had a non-significant iNKT increase over controls. Strong correlations were found between ALT levels and CD14+ and iNKT MP among NAFL/NASH patients (r= 0.63 and P<.0001 for CD14+; r=0.59 and P=.0001 for iNKT).
Among chronic HCV patients, investigators observed a strong correlation between histological inflammation grade and iNKT MP (r=0.76, P<.0001). Correlations were also found between CD4+ and CD8+ and fibrosis stage among HCV patients (r=0.63, P<.0001 for CD4+; r=0.59, P=.0002 for CD8+), but not NAFL/NASH patients. A strong correlation was observed between CD14+ and iNKT MP (r=0.7, P<.0001) among participants with NAFL/NASH that exceeded all other combinations.
“By analyzing circulating S100-MP, a systemic profile of immune cell subsets that are prominently involved in [chronic HCV] or NAFL/NASH can be obtained,” the researchers wrote. “… S100-MP appear to represent a novel diagnostic tool to assess overall disease severity and especially activity, with the advantage of being specific, noninvasive and quantitative.”