Antiproliferative effect of hepatitis C virus on mitogen-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells: Potential role in viral persistence in Egyptian patients

Objectives: We aimed to study the effect of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and sera of chronic HCV patients on phytohemagglutinin (PHA)-stimulated normal donor PBMCs and to study the effect of chronic HCV infection on some cytokine profile. Subjects and methods: 3H-Thymidine uptake was utilized to study effect of pelleted virus and patients sera on PBMCs proliferation in vitro. The study included 337 Egyptian chronic liver patients from Ain Shams University Hospitals and 90 healthy control subjects. The patients’ group included chronic hepatitis C (250 subjects), and other chronic liver diseases (87 subjects). All subjects’ sera were subjected to RT-PCR for HCV RNA detection, IL-4, IL-1β, and TNF-α measurement by EIA, and biochemical measurement of ALT and albumin. Results: Treatment of PHA-stimulated normal donor PBMCs with pelleted virus led to decrease (dose response) in their rate of proliferation. This was partially reversed after addition of HCV RNA positive patients’ sera. HCV RNA positive patients were significantly higher in IL-4 and ALT, and lower in IL-1β and albumin than HCV RNA negative patients. Conclusion: HCV infection suppresses early immune response. This leads to increased IL-4 Th2 cytokine.