OBJECTIVEViral hepatitis remains a major public health problem and the most common type of liver disease worldwide. There are an increasing number of patients with chronic hepatitis B who develop acute hepatitis on chronic condition (AOC) and die of acute hepatic failure both as a result of lack of understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease and lack of effective treatment. The hallmark of AOC is the extreme rapidity of the necromicroinflammatory process resulting in widespread or total hepatocellular necrosis in weeks or even days. Our previous studies have shown in an experimental animal model of fulminant viral hepatitis caused by murine hepatitis virus strain 3, the importance of macrophage activation, and expression of a unique gene mfgl 2 which encodes a serine protease capable of directly cleaving prothrombin to thrombin, resulting in widespread fibrin deposition within the liver and hepatocyte necrosis. The undergoing study in this report is designed to identify the role of hfgl 2 (human fibrinogen like protein 2) /fibroleukin in patients with viral hepatitis.

METHODSLiver tissues were obtained from 23 patients with AOC hepatitis B, and from 13 patients with inactive chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and 14 patients with chronic hepatitis B with cirrhosis during the year of 1995 to the end of 2001. Liver biopsies were performed within 30 min after the patients were diagnosed with death as a result of acute hepatic failure. Liver samples were also obtained from 4 liver donors as normal controls. In addition, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were isolated from 30 patients (unpaired) with AOC hepatitis B and 10 patients with CHB during the May of 2001 to March of 2002 and 10 healthy volunteer as negative control. PBMCs were freshly isolated and smeared on slides and kept at -80 degree C for further use. Histological sections were stained with hemotoxylin and eosin. A 169 bp of hfgl 2 cDNA probe and a polyclonal or monoclonal antibody against hfgl 2 were used to detect the expression of hfgl 2 mRNA and protein in liver samples as well as PBMC by immune histochemistry separately.

RESULTSLiver tissues from the patients with acute on chronic hepatitis had classical pathological features of acute necroinflammation. Hfgl 2 was detected by immune histochemistry in 21 of 23 patients (91.3%) in liver sections from patients with acute on CHB, while only 1 of 13 patients (7.7%) with CHB and cirrhosis and no evidence of active disease had hfgl 2 mRNA or protein expression. 28 of 30 patients (93.3%) with acute on CHB and 1 of 10 with CHB were detected with hfgl 2 expression in PBMC. There was no hfgl 2 expression in either the liver tissue or the PBMC from the normal donors. There was positive correlation of hfgl 2 expression and the severity of the disease displayed by the value of bilirubin and PT.

CONCLUSIONThe molecular and cellular results reported here in patients with acute on chronic hepatitis and who died of acute hepatic failure correlates with previous report in 8 patients with fulminant hepatic failure (FHF) and mimic closely the changes observed in the murine model of fulminant viral hepatitis in which the pathogenesis of the disease has been studied in a stepwise fashion. This study further suggests that virus induced hfgl 2 prothrombinase/fibroleukin expression and the potent function of the protein it encodes plays a pivotal role in initiating acute severe hepatitis on the baseline of chronic hepatitis. The measurement of hfgl 2/fibroleukin expression in PBMC may serve as a useful marker to monitor the severity of disease in patients with the AOC hepatitis B and a target for therapeutic intervention.