The changes and significance of serum leptin levels in patients post-liver transplantation

To explore the effect of liver transplantation-induced liver ischemia/reperfusion injury on serum leptin levels in these patients, serum samples of patients with malignant primary liver cancer or cholangiocarcinoma who had been given holo-hepatectomy were collected, and RIA and ELISA were used to detect serum levels of leptin, CRP and Interleukin-lβ (IL-1β) in these patients. Results showed that compared with self-control before operation, leptin level de- creased immediately after operation, continued to decrease after one hour of non-liver period, reached the lowest level after one hour of neo-liver period, and increased to a higher level than that of self-control before operation at ten hours after operation (P<0.05). Serum level of CRP had a similar change as that of leptin, reaching the lowest after one hour of neo-liver peri- od and recovering to normal level gradually after that. Serum level of IL-113 also expressed a trend to decrease at the beginning and to recover to normal level at 10 hours after operation. Results showed that serum leptin level decreased significantly in the early stage of post-liver transplantation and increased thereafter with a significant difference vs that before operation, which occurred concurrently with the changes of acute phase protein CRP and inflammatory cytokine IL-1β, which indicates that leptin plays an important role in liver transplantation. (authors)