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High levels of HCV core+1 antibodies in HCV patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

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Zeitschriftentitel: Journal of General Virology
Personen und Körperschaften: Dalagiorgou, G., Vassilaki, N., Foka, P., Boumlic, A., Kakkanas, A., Kochlios, E., Khalili, S., Aslanoglou, E., Veletza, S., Orfanoudakis, G., Vassilopoulos, D., Hadziyannis, S. J., Koskinas, J., Mavromara, P.
In: Journal of General Virology, 92, 2011, 6, S. 1343-1351
Format: E-Article
Sprache: Englisch
veröffentlicht:
Microbiology Society
Schlagwörter:
Virology
Details
Zusammenfassung: <jats:p>The core region of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome possesses an overlapping ORF that has been shown to encode a protein, known as the alternate reading frame protein (ARFP), F or core+1. The biological role of this protein remains elusive, as it appears to be non-essential for virus replication. However, a number of independent studies have shown that the ARFP/F/core+1 protein elicits humoral and cellular immune responses in HCV-infected individuals and interacts with important cellular proteins. To assess the significance of the core+1 humoral response in HCV-infected patients, we examined the prevalence of anti-core+1 antibodies in sera from patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in comparison with chronically HCV-infected individuals without HCC. We produced two HCV core+1 histidine-tagged recombinant proteins for genotypes 1a (aa 11–160) and 1b (aa 11–144), as well as a non-tagged highly purified recombinant core+1/S protein (aa 85–144) of HCV-1b. Using an in-house ELISA, we tested the prevalence of core+1 antibodies in 45 patients with HCC in comparison with 47 chronically HCV-infected patients without HCC and 77 negative-control sera. More than 50 % of the serum samples from HCC patients reacted with all core+1 antigens, whereas &lt;26 % of the sera from the non-HCC HCV-infected individuals tested positive. No core+1-specific reactivity was detected in any of the control samples. In conclusion, the high occurrence of anti-core+1 antibodies in the serum of HCC patients suggests a role for the ARFP/F/core+1 protein in the pathogenesis of HCC.</jats:p>
Umfang: 1343-1351
ISSN: 0022-1317
1465-2099
DOI: 10.1099/vir.0.023010-0