Correlation of autoimmune reactivity with hepatitis B and C virus (HBV and HCV) infection in histologically proven chronic liver diseases.
OBJECTIVE
To comprehensively study the possibility of autoimmune reactivity by hepatitis viruses B and C (HBV &HCV) in Indian chronic liver disease (CLD) patients.


METHODS
One hundred and sixty histopathologically proven CLD cases and 100 matched controls were analysed for viral serology for HBV and HCV and autoimmune serology for antinuclear antibody (ANA), anti smooth muscle antibody (ASMA) and Liver kidney microsomal antibody (LKM) using standard immunofluorescence technique.


RESULTS
43.7% of cases were chronic hepatitis B while 16.2% were positive for HCV. CLD-B cases showed ANA positivity in 27.1% and ASMA positivity in 25.7%. CLD-C cases revealed 26.9%, 46.1% and 11.1% positivity for ANA, ASMA and LKM antibodies respectively. These rates and titres of autoantibodies were statistically significant (p= or < 0.02) when compared with that of controls.


CONCLUSIONS
Based on the pattern of autoantibody positivity, it could be concluded that chronic HBV infection may induce autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) type I and chronic HCV infection might trigger AIH - Type II in Indian CLD cases.
Dept. of Immunology, Stanley Medical College, Chennai - 600 001, India.
S
S
Shantha
S P
SP
Thyagarajan
R K
RK
Premavathy
R G
RG
Sukumar
K V K
KV
Mohan
K R
KR
Palanisamy
P
P
Rajasambandam