The Role of Serum Leptin and IL-6 Levels in Post Viral Hepatitis Cirrhotic patients

Chronic liver disease is characterized by numerous metabolic alterations resulting in the clinical picture of malnutrition or even cachexia and contributing to complications such as hepatic encephalopathy and ascites. Leptin is a hormone that plays an important role in regulating energy intake and expenditure including appetite and metabolism. Interleukin-6 (IL-6), on the other hand, is generally considered to be one of the important cytokines that regulate immunologic and metabolic actions. The aim of the present study was to investigate serum leptin and IL-6 levels in liver cirrhosis, as well as to determine their levels in relation to liver functions and lipid profile. This study was conducted on 25 patients with post- viral hepatic cirrhosis compared to 20 healthy matched individuals served as controls with the same age and sex. The severity of the disease assessed with Child-Pugh criteria yielded 8 patients (3 women, 5 men) with stage A, 10 patients (4 women, 6 men) with stage B and 7 patients (2 women, 5 men) with stage C. Compared to controls, body mass index (BMI) was decreased and reached statistical significance in group C liver cirrhosis (P< 0.05). Also, serum leptin level was highly significantly decreased in the three groups, while IL-6 level showed highly significant increase. Leptin level negatively correlated with aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and total bilirubin and positively correlated with serum albumin, triglycerides (TG), cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL). In contrast, serum IL-6 level positively correlated with parameters of liver functions and negatively correlated with parameters of lipid profile. Additionally, there was highly significant negative correlation between serum leptin and IL-6 levels (P < 0.001) in post-hepatic cirrhotic patients. We concluded that leptin and IL-6 have important role in diagnosis and prognosis of patients with post-hepatic liver cirrhosis