High concentration

of sTNFR-II has been observed for prolonged periods in the circulation of patients with various inflammatory diseases (including HCV infection), making sTNFR-II an ideal serum biomarker for characterizing type 1 immune response [29–32]. Moreover, IL-8 contributes to human cancer progression through potential mitogenic, and angiogenic functions. IL-8 expressions plays a more critical role in the metastatic potential of human HCC (such as vascular invasion) than in angiogenesis or tumor proliferation [33]. Our aim was to evaluate the serum levels of sFas, TNFR-II, IL-2R and IL-8 as possible candidate biomarkers for an early detection of HCC. Results The clinical find more characteristics of the studied groups are shown in Table 1. All recruited patients were positive for HCV antibodies, PCR for HCV RNA and all had genotype-4. Mean age of patients with HCC was significantly higher than that of the other groups (p < 0.001). Liver function tests were significantly elevated, whereas log-HCV titer was significantly lower in HCC patients (p < 0.001) when compared to patients with chronic hepatitis C with persistent normal alanine aminotransferase

levels (PNALT) and chronic this website liver disease (CLD) patients. Figure 1 shows the distribution of log-HCV titer in the different study groups, which included 68 men and 29 women. Mann-Whitney test was used for comparing log-HCV, sFas, sTNFR-II, sIL-2R and IL-8 values with gender. Comparing the means of men versus women, the former had only higher

and significant (p = 0.04) log-HCV titer (11.16 ± 4.1) and (9.7 ± 1.5), respectively; however, all other markers did not statistically differ. Table 1 Patients characteristics and log-HCV titer among the Cyclin-dependent kinase 3 different study groups Variables Control (9) PNALT (17) CLD (32) HCC (30) p -value M/W 7/2 12/5 24/8 25/5 < 0.001 Age (years): Mean ± SD 50.9 ± 4.6b 35.1 ± 11.5c 43.4 ± 8.7b 60.7 ± 8.3a < 0.001 Log HCV-titer <615* 10.9 ± 3.2a 9.9 ± 4.1a 5.2 ± 4.7b < 0.001 Groups with similar letters are not different statistically. A p -value < 0.05 was considered significant. M/W: Men/Women; PNALT: chronic hepatitis C with persistent normal alanine aminotrasferase; CLD: chronic liver disease; HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma. *All cases were under detection limit (<615 IU/ml) and so they were not included in the statistical analysis (Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA). Figure 1 Scatter diagram of the distribution of log-HCV titer results among the different study groups. PNALT: Chronic hepatitis C with persistent normal alanine aminotrasferase; CLD: Chronic liver disease; HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma. Table 2 depicts the comparison of the serum levels of sFas, sTNFR-II, sIL-2Rα and IL-8. HCC patients had higher sFas, sTNFR-II and sIL-2R than patients with PNALT, CLD and normal controls with a significant difference for sFas between HCC patients and control (p < 0.001).