Chinese Hepatolgy ›› 2018, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (12): 1078-1080.

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Preliminary exploration of the relationship between IgG4 and immunological liver injury

WANG Lan, QIU Hong, YANG Rui-ning   

  1. Laboratory Department of Nanjing 81th Hospital Affiliated to Nangjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jiangsu 210002, China
  • Received:2018-07-16 Published:2020-04-29
  • Contact: YANG Rui-ning

Abstract: Objective To analyze the level of immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4) in serum from patients with 3 types of immunological liver injury, and to investigate its correlation with different types of immunological liver injury and the clinical significance. Methods A total of 220 patients with immunological liver injury in our hospital were enrolled, including 80 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 60 patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) and 80 patients with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). The serum biochemical index, serum IgG4 level and autoantibodies of the 3 groups were retrospectively analyzed for comparative analysis of the relationship between IgG4 and diseases. Results The median level of IgG4 in AIH group was 3.24 (1.78~4.53), which was significantly higher than that in other 2 groups (P<0.05). The median level of IgG4 in PBC group was 2.19 (0.69~3.01), which was higher than that in CHB group (1.40) (0.55~3.05). Within the group, serum IgG4 levels showed a certain correlation with liver function and autoantibody positive rate. Conclusion The correlation between AIH and IgG4 is the most relevant among the 3 groups. Thus, detection of IgG4 content is of great significance in the diagnosis of immunological liver injury, such as AIH, and the evaluation of therapeutic effect.

Key words: Immunoglobulin G4;Immunological liver injury