الفهرس 
List of Contents
chapter 1 : Hepatitis C virus infectionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Chronic hepatitis C virus infection constitutes a major health problem in Egypt. Egypt has the highest HCV prevalence around the world (Lavanchy et al. 2011). A cross sectional survey study done on 2008 showed that HCV prevalence in Egypt is about 14.7 % (El-Zanaty et al. 2008). So, Diagnosis and management of HCV and its complications including mainly hepatic fibrosis takes a major focus nowadays. Although liver biopsy is considered the gold standard for diagnosis and staging the degree of liver fibrosis, it has many hazards and risk factors including pain, hemorrhage, risk of infection, inter-observer variability and of course “ invasiveness”. Therefore, we need to explore new, reliable, cost-effective, non-invasive means for assessment of liver fibrosis. Recently, evaluation of biochemical markers as fibrotic indicators has emerged. The aim of this study was to evaluate plasma PDGF-BB level as a biomarker of hepatic fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis C. To achieve this aim, we measured the serum level of PDGF BB in 70 patients with liver fibrosis classified according to METVIR scoring system into those with early fibrosis (n= 33) and those with late fibrosis (n= 37). Additionally, 31 apparently healthy individuals were enrolled to serve as a control group. The conventional fibrotic indices including APRI, FIB-4, MPV and AST/ALT ratio were calculated and serum AFP level and platelet count were estimated in all studied subjects.