Background & Aims: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly aggressive cancer with few treatment options. Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) plays a key role in innate immunity and may affect the development of cancers. This study aimed to investigate the association between TLR3 gene polymorphism and HCV-related hepatocellular carcinoma in Egypt. Methods: This work was conducted on 70 individuals; fifty HCV cirrhotic patients were included in two groups; with HCC (30 patients) and without HCC (20 patients) compared with a group of 20 apparently healthy controls. All of the studied individuals underwent clinical-laboratory evaluation. TLR3 gene single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (+1234C/T) was tested by polymerase chain reaction- restriction fragment length polymorphism. Results: This study reported that the prevalence of TLR3 +1234TT genotype was significantly increased in cirrhotic patients with HCC than without HCC, while it was not detected at all among the controls. When analyzing the TLR3 SNP +1234C/T with different clinical parameters in HCC patients, there was a significant association between+1234C/T SNP; namely TT genotype and each of the hepatic focal lesions᾽ number, size and the patients᾽ higher Okuda and BCLC stages. No association could be detected between TLR3 SNP and the age, sex, Child-Pugh grades, MELD score or AFP of the studied HCC cases. Conclusion: TLR3 gene SN P +1234C/T could be a novel risk factor for the HCV-related HCC among the Egyptian population.

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Background and study aim:The incremental global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus imposes an enormous burden on medical health systems. We focused on determining the predictors for the COVID-19 patient's course of illness and what level of care will be actually needed at hospital admission.Patients and Methods: 170 symptomatic COVID-19 Egyptian patients were gleaned from August 2020 to January 2021, were categorized into a group that managed at home or ward admitted and a group that necessitated ICU hospitalization at Tanta University or Kafr El-sheikh University isolation hospitals. Each patient's demographics, clinical, laboratory, and radiological data were gathered and several classification strategies were applied. The variables that predicted the severity of disease and ICU admission were established via logistic regression. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was used to assess performance. Results:The top risk variables predicting ICU admission were blood oxygen saturation (P<0.001), serum ferritin (P= 0.023), WHO assessment scale (P= 0.001) and presence of fatigue (P= 0.001) or myalgia (P= 0.028) and with the best accuracy for WHO assessment scale >4 and oxygen saturation ≤90 with an AUC of 0.850 (95% CI [0.795 -0.905]) and 0.800 (95% CI [0.735 -0.865]), respectively. Conclusion:Fatigue, myalgia, oxygen saturation, pulse, respiratory rates, ferritin, and C-reactive protein may prove useful for physicians to distinguish which COVID-19 patients will be required to be managed critically at hospital admission.