engleski

Hepatocyte growth factor in alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients

There are still many questions about mechanisms of liver regeneration in liver cirrhosis caused by alcohol damage The possible answer could be a discovery of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) as a most potent mitogen for hepatocytes which is activated by several steps after liver injury. The aim of this study was to determine whether the hepatocyte growth factor levels correlate with the grade of alcoholic liver cirrhosis and could it be used in classification of illness. The HGF levels were measured in 33 alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients and 42 healthy volunteers by ELISA, Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, Tokyo, Japan, with detection limit of 0.1 ng/ml.. The patients were subdivided in two subgroups according to grade of illness (by Child-Pugh- Turcot classification). The HGF levels were higher in cirrhotics than in healthy volunteers (0.78*0.38 vs. 0.2*0.06 ng/ml, p<0.001). In subgroup Child B the mean HGF levels were higher than in Child A (0.98*0.38 vs. 0.52 *0.13 ng/ml, p<0.001). There were found a significant correlation between HGF and other liver function tests. The best correlation was recorded between HGF and serum albumin (r=0.8, p<0.001) with regression line of polynomic type, and between HGF and AST (r= 0.76, p<0.001) with power regression line. The ROC analyze showed that measuring of HGF levels had convincingly best efficacy than any other standard liver function test, so measuring of HGF levels could be useful in discriminating alcoholic cirrhosis patients from healthy subjects, and can be used to classifying patients according to grade of illness. The area under the curve which represents ability of HGF to discriminate heavier grade of illness (Child B) was 1 suggesting that diagnostic accuracy is 100%.

alcohol damage; hepatocyte growth factor; HGF; cirrhotics

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