Acute and chronic liver diseases are a major global public health problem; nevertheless, the etiology of 12–30% of cases remains obscure. The purpose of this research was to study the incidence of human herpesviruses (HHVs) cytomegalovirus, Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), and HHV-6 in patients with hepatitis and to examine the effect of HHV on the disease severity. We studied the clinical materials of 259 patients with hepatitis treated in Infectious Clinic n.1 (Moscow) and the archived materials of 118 patients with hepatitis C. HHV DNA was detected in the whole blood in 13.5% of patients with hepatitis B or C and in 10.1% of patients with hepatitis of unspecified etiology. EBV demonstrated the highest incidence (58.1%). Cirrhosis was diagnosed in 50% of patients with HHV and in 15.6% of patients without HHV. In patients with hepatitis C, the frequency of HHV was higher in liver biopsy (38.7%) compared to blood. The clinical and virological indicators of hepatitis were considerably higher in patients with coinfection. Conclusion: HHV detected in patients with viral hepatitis has been associated with a significant effect on the severity of the disease, and we suggest monitoring HHV DNA in patients with severe hepatitis and/or poor response to antiviral drugs.
Modern studies have shown a high plasticity and phenotypic diversity of neutrophilic granulocytes (NG) provided by different receptors, which are diagnostic markers for the functional capacity of the cell in the course of their activities. We investigated NG from peripheral blood, obtained from healthy people of both sexes aged from 26 to 66 years. Evaluation of the neutrophil membrane receptor expression was carried out by flow cytometry. The relative amount of neutrophilic granulocytes expressing membrane CD62L, CD63, CD66d receptors and the intensity of their expression were determined according to their fluorescence intensities. The surface NG membrane receptors, i.e., CD62L, CD63, CD66d were studied upon the in vitro experimental influence of the following bacterial peptides: N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (FMLP, model 1); glucosaminylmuramyldipeptide (GMDP, model 2), and simultaneous incubation of NG blood with fMLP and GMDP (model 3). The in vitro treatment with fMLP in the in vitro model was used to transform the NG phenotype of conventionally healthy subjects, expressing CD62, CD63, CD66d molecules. The treatment caused a significantly decrease in both CD62L and the CD62L expression in relative amounts of neutrophilic granulocytes with a parallel increase of CD63 expression density. The effect of GMDP on the NG phenotype of conditionally healthy subjects did not change the amount of CD62L+NG and CD63+NG, and did not affect CD62L and CD63 expression density on the surface of NG. However, the amount of CD66d+NG was significantly increased with the unchanged expression of CD66d molecules. GMDP introduced together with the bacterial fMLP peptide was shown to neutralize some features of the NG phenotype transformation caused by fMLP, i.e., the amount of CD62L+ NG was restored by 22 % and the CD62L expression density increased significantly. At the same time, GMDP did not correct the negative effect of fMLP upon the number of CD63+NG and CD66d+NG, and on the CD63 and CD66d expression. Simultaneous addition of fMLP and GMDP did significantly increase the amount of CD66d+NG and expression density of CD63 molecules on the CD63+NG membrane as compared to intact NG of conditionally healthy subjects. The obtained data are important in order to justify some new immunotherapeutic strategies aimed at correction of the negatively transformed NG phenotype, which accompanies some infectious and inflammatory diseases of bacterial etiology with atypical clinical course.