study of rapid decline in serum levels of soluble CD163 as a marker of fibrosis improvement with successful direct antiviral treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is estimated to infect 185 million chronically worldwide, with 3-4 million new infections per year and over 350,000 deaths due to HCV-related liver disease each year (Gower et al., 2016). HCV infection has variable long term impact ranging from minimal effects to chronic hepatitis, advanced fibrosis, cirrhosis, decompensated cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and may also induce extra hepatic complication (Maasoumy and Wedemeyer, 2016).