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Abstract Introduction and aim of work: Portal hypertension and esophageal varices formation complicating chronic HCV infection are considered the most devastating side effects of chronic liver disease owing to the bleeding-related mortality. Angiogenesis is the hallmark of their pathogenesis. Apelin is one of the recently identified angiogenic and fibrogenic peptide of wide distribution in various tissues. We studied apelin gene expression and SNP (rs3761581) of the apelin gene in chronic HCV patients to assess their association with the degree of hepatic fibrosis, esophageal varices formation as well as the grade of esophageal varices |