The correlation between clinical prognosis together with the treatment of chronic hepatitis B infection and serum CD 95 (FAS) and nitric oxide levels in children

ABSTRACTTHE CORRELATION BETWEEN CLINICAL PROGNOSIS TOGETHERWITH THE TREATMENT OF CHRONIC HEPATITIS B INFECTION ANDSERUM CD 95 (FAS) AND NITRIC OXIDE LEVELS IN CHILDRENDr. Aylin KONTResidency thesis, Department of PaediatricsSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Yavuz COSKUNMarch 2007, 79 pagesThe aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between chronichepatitis B infections in children and the serum levels of CD 95 and nitric oxide(NO), that may play an important role both in inflammation and in apoptosis.In this study, 32 patients with, asympthomatic carrier hepatitis B (21 male,11 female) as group I, 37 patients with chronic active hepatitis B as group II (25male, 12 female) and 32 healthy children (18 male, 14 female) as the controlgroup were included. All the groups were investigated in terms of age, sex, thetotal period of the illness, the ways of transmission, the marker positivity of theparents, ALT levels every 3 months, HBsAg, antiHBs, HBeAg, antiHBc, totalplasma HBV DNA levels and also for the levels of CD 95 and NO.As a result, we found that CD 95 and NO levels are significantly higher inthe groups I and II, when compared with the control group. In HBsAg (+)patients, in another word in group I and II together, NO and CD 95 levels aresignificantly higher, when compared with the control group. There is nosignificant difference between the groups I and II for the levels of NO and CD95. And also no significant difference, between the patients with normal andhigher levels of ALT was determined. When we compared HBeAg (-) and theHBeAg (+) HBV patients, we identified that there is no significant differencebetween the levels of NO and CD 95. Comparison of HBV DNA (-) patients withHBV DNA (+) ones did not show statistically significant difference for NO andCD 95 levels. CD 95 and NO levels of the patients on interferon and lamuvidinetreatment did not differ importantly from the patients who did not take therapy.In this study we observed that higher CD 95 and NO levels were closelyrelated with the degree of inflammation and apoptosis. The result of our studywhich is similar to very few studies in the literature need to be supported byfurther comprehensive investigations.Key words: HBV, Chronic hepatitis B infection, Apoptosis, CD 95 (FAS),Nitric oxide