1. Variations in serum sphingolipid levels associate with liver fibrosis progression and poor treatment outcome in hepatitis C virus but not hepatitis B virus infection
- Author
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Christoph Sarrazin, Daniel Fitting, Julia Dietz, Nerea Ferreirós, Stefan Zeuzem, C. Berkowski, Stephanie Schwalm, Dimitra Bon, Josef Pfeilschifter, Eva Herrmann, and Georgios Grammatikos
- Subjects
Adult ,Liver Cirrhosis ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Adolescent ,Hepatitis C virus ,Biology ,medicine.disease_cause ,Chronic liver disease ,Gastroenterology ,Hepatitis B, Chronic ,Sphingosine ,Internal medicine ,medicine ,Humans ,Aged ,Retrospective Studies ,Hepatitis B virus ,Sphingolipids ,Hepatology ,Hepatitis C ,Hepatitis B ,Hepatitis C, Chronic ,Middle Aged ,medicine.disease ,Immunology ,Homeostatic model assessment ,Disease Progression ,Female ,Viral hepatitis - Abstract
Ablation of very-long-chain ceramides (Cers) with consecutive elevations in sphinganine levels has been shown to cause a severe hepatopathy in a knockout mouse model. We have recently shown that serum sphingolipids (SLs) are deregulated in patients with chronic liver disease. However, their role as possible biomarkers in liver fibrosis remains to date unexplored. We assessed, using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry, serum concentrations of various SL metabolites in 406 patients with chronic viral hepatitis, 203 infected with genotype 1 hepatitis C virus (HCV) and 203 with hepatitis B virus (HBV), respectively. We observed significant variations of serum SLs, with sphingosine and sphinganine being, both in univariate (P
- Published
- 2014