Serum levels of prolactin, growth hormone and insuline-like growth factor-1 in patients with chronic hepatitis C

2. SUMMARY Serum levels of prolactin, growth hormone and insuline-like growth factor-1 in patients with chronic hepatitis C Key words: HCV, autoimmunity, prolactin, growth hormone, insuline-like growth factor-1 Apart from chronic hepatitis, end stage liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma, hepatitis C virus may frequently lead to development of extrahepatic immunologic abnormalities. Depending on the criteria used, as many as 70 percent of HCV- infected patients have autoantibody formation and 20-30 percent have clinical manifestations of systemic or organ-specific autoimmunity. Multiple factors contribute to development of the autoimmunity. These factors include genetic background, local tissue alterations, infections and hormonal alterations. Since long time it is known that beyond their somatic influences, growth hormone and prolactin are required for the development and functions of the immune system. As their immunostimulatory properties, there is some evidence that growth hormone and prolactin abnormalities contribute to the pathogenesis of a number of autoimmune diseases. In this study, we investigated autoimmune manifestations and serum levels of growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor-1 and prolactin in patients with chronic hepatitis C. A total of 28 (20 female and 8 male) patients with chronic hepatitis C with a mean age of 55±8.5 and 21 (14 female and 7 male) healthy controls with a mean age of 53.8±10 were included in this study. Serum levels of growth hormone, insulin like growth factor-1 and prolactin were measured in both groups. To determine whether interferon treatment had an influence on the serum levels of growth hormone, insuline-like growth factor-1 and prolactin, patients treated with interferon were compared to patients who did not take any treatment. We also investigated the anti-T, anti-M, ANA, ASMA, anti-LKM autoantibodies in patients with hepatitis C.Serum levels of prolactin were not different between the two groups (11.55 ng/mL vs 13.82 ng/mL; p=0.12). Serum levels of growth hormone and insuline like growth factor-1 were higher than the healthy controls and the differences were statistically significant (levels of growth hormone; 2.79 mlU/L vs 0.99 mlU/L, p=0.00 and insulin-like growth factor-1; 201.32 ng/mL vs 168.95 ng/mL, p=0.00). We found 9 percent anti-T antibody positivity, 43 percent ANA and 29 percent ASMA seropositivity in patients with hepatitis C. In conclusion: 1. We detected autoantibody formation in patients with chronic hepatitis C similar to the previous reports. 2. Growth hormone and insuline-like growth factor-1 may contribute to the pathogenesis of autoimmunity associated with hepatitis C infection as serum levels of these hormones were found to be significantly higher than controls.