State Medical Academy, Novosibirsk, Russia
The lesion of the liver in viral hepatitis was found to depend on the state of the immune system. Relationship between the content of lymphocyte subpopulations (CD3+, CD4+, CD8+, CD20+) in the blood and immunoglobulins (IgG, IgM, IgA) with parameters of semi-quantitative evaluation of the activity of hepatitis and the stage of liver fibrosis in children with chronic virus hepatitis B, C, B+C was studied. The characteristic feature of all hepatitis was a decrease in the number of T lymphocytes CD4+ below the normal level and an increase in the content of B lymphocytes. The correlation between the morphological activity of hepatitis and the amount of T lymphocytes CD8+ was established only in chronic hepatitis B. In chronic hepatitis B and B+C the absolute amount of blood lymphocytes decreased with the increase of the age of the patients, but in chronic hepatitis B this was accompanied by the decrease of the morphological activity of hepatitis and in hepatitis B+C by its increase. The amount of lymphocytes CD4+ rose with the increase of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B. In children with chronic hepatitis C and B+C the amount of blood lymphocytes was found to be unrelated to the morphological activity of hepatitis.
Zh. Mikrobiol. (Moscow), 2004, No. 2, P. 50—56