Clinicopathological features of hepatitis C virus disease after living donor liver transplantation: relationship with in situ hybridisation data.

AIMS: Recurrent hepatitis is a significant complication after liver transplantation for hepatitis C virus (HCV) disease. To evaluate responsiveness to treatment of HCV disease after liver transplantation, in situ hybridisation (ISH) was employed.

METHODS

Sense and anti-sense probes for HCV were synthesised, and ISH studies were performed on 19 liver biopsy specimens from 19 recipients who had undergone living donor liver transplantation for HCV disease. ISH positive cells and total hepatocytes were counted, and the percentage of positive cells was calculated. Other clinical findings were compared retrospectively with the ISH results.

RESULTS

The subjects were divided into three groups: recurrent HCV hepatitis (RHC, n = 11), acute cellular rejection (ACR, n = 5), and recurrent HCV hepatitis with ACR (MIX, n = 3). The percentage of ISH positive cells was almost the same degree (10-20%) in the three groups. The RHC group was subdivided into two sets of patients in whom serum HCV titres decreased (group D, n = 7) or did not decrease (group ND, n = 3) after 1 month of IFN therapy. The percentage of ISH positive cells in group D was significantly lower than that in group ND (p < 0.05)

CONCLUSIONS

ISH for the recipients with HCV may be useful for predicting the response to interferon therapy.