The Clinical Significance of Srum IL-18 in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis B

Objective To explore the clinical significance of serum IL-18 in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B and liver failure.Methods The serum levels of IL-18 in 78 patients with different clinical types of chronic hepatitis B and 20 healthy subjects with normal liver function were measured with Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA).Meanwhile,the liver function,HBsAg,HBsAb,HBeAg,HBeAb,HBcAb and HBV-DNA of all subjects were measured,and HbsAg levels and PT of some patients were also measured.Results The serum levels of IL-18 in 78 patients with chronic hepatitis B were 555.46 ± 582.72 ng/mL,while in thehealthy control group,the serum levels of IL-18 were(259.0 ± 99.57)ng/mL.By rank sum test which is completely randomized design to compare two independent samples,the serum levels of IL-18 had statistically significant difference between chronic hepatitis B group and healthy control group(P0.001).The serum levels of IL-18 in Anti-virus group,HbeAg+CHB group,HBeAg-CHB group,liver failure group were(331.90±228.80)ng/mL,(428.02±244.08)ng/mL,(575.70±339.53)ng/mL and(1299.0±571.40)ng/mL,respectively,and in each group the levels of IL-18 were higher than the healthy control group,and the difference was statistically significant(P 0.001).The serum levels of IL-18 in liver failure group were the highest in 4 clinical types of groups,and the difference was statistically significant.The serum levels of IL-18 were: HBeAg-CHB group HbeAg+CHB group anti-viral treatment group,but the difference was not statistically significant(P0.05).The serum levels of IL-18 in high and low viral load groups were(618.64±690.46)ng/mL and(475.60±508.26)ng/mL,respectively,and there was no statistically significant difference(P0.05).The serum levels of IL-18 of the load of HbsAg in the high and low groups were(846.40±1175.78)and(701.20±690.46)ng/mL,respectively,and there was no statistically significant difference(P0.05).The relationships between IL-18 and ALT,AST,and Tbil were analyzed by Spearman rank correlation test and correlation coefficient was statistically significant(P0.05)in 63 cases with the inflammatory activity of chronic HBV infection,indicating there was a positive correlation between IL-18 and ALT,AST,and Tbil.IL-18 is positively correlated with Tbil in a high degree.The relationship between IL-18 and HBV-DNA was tested by the Spearman rank correlation,the correlation coefficient was not statistically significant(P0.05).Conclusions IL-18 is involved in the immune response,liver injury and reconditioning to HBV infection;IL-18 may be one of the reasons of hepatic failure;Serum levels of IL-18 are related to the degree of liver injury,and have no significant correlation with the loads of HBV-DNA and HbsAg.