Transcriptome patterns for Acute Cellular Rejection in Recipients with Recurrent Hepatitis C after Liver Transplantation

The histological evaluation of liver via biopsy remains as the standard for the diagnosis of both acute cellular rejection (ACR) and recurrent hepatitis C (RHC) after liver transplantation. Nevertheless, it is often difficult to diagnose ACR in HCV-positive recipients because of common co-existing and overlapping morphological changes with RHC. The aim of the study was to identify potential target genes for ACR in recipients with RHC. We analyzed 22 liver biopsy samples obtained from 21 HCV-positive recipients. The clinicopathological diagnoses for the biopsies were ACR-predominant with superimposed RHC in 9 samples (ACR group) and RHC with no ACR (non-ACR group) in the remaining. We compared the transcriptional alterations between the two groups with oligonucleotide microarray and selected 2206 genes which were significantly modulated in ACR. Subsequently we analyzed the regulatory networks in ACR using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis, and focused on 5 genes (IFNAR1, IL-12RB2, NFATC3, BMP2, and CASP8) from the core network as the target genes for ACR. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that novel transcriptome patterns of ACR and concurrent RHC were present and distinct from recipients with only RHC, suggesting that gene expression profiling may have a role in the diagnosis of ACR in recipients with hepatitis C. Keywords: Gene identification in ACR with recurrent HCV infection Of 22 liver biopsy samples, 9 represented the clinicopathological diagnoses for ACR-predominant with superimposed RHC (ACR group) and 13 represented the clinicopathological diagnoses for RHC with no ACR (non-ACR group) .