Innate immunity in patients with liver cirrhosis and Hepatitis C Virus infection as aetiology

Introduction: Previous studies showed that liver cirrhotic patients with Hepatitis C virus infection (HCV) exhibit an approximately five- time higher risk of infection than healthy people. Therefore, we investigated innate immune function and the occurrence of infections in this patient group compared to liver cirrhotics with other aetiologies and healthy controls. Methods: Innate immune function of 80 cirrhotic patients of various aetiologies (13 HCV, 44 alcoholic, 23 others) and 40 healthy controls was determined through two different ways. For determining humoral bacterial killing, patient and control sera we…