Abstract:
Hepatitis B virus remains a major global pathogen that cause acute and chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma, Interleukin-12(IL 12) cytokine has ability to induce interferon gamma, probably plays an important role in the antiviral immune response to HBV during natural infection. This is case-control study was aimed to evaluate plasma Interleukin-12(IL-12) level in Sudanese patients infected with Hepatitis B virus(HBV) compared to healthy control group in Saba laboratory (hepatitis B virus infections center) in Khartoum state during the period from April to February (2020). Eighty subjects, selected randomly in this study, with age varies from 12-70 years. Fourty subjects are hepatitis B patients as case group with mean of age 30.2±12.3 years and fourty subjects as aberrantly healthy group with mean of age 34.3±12.2 years are age and sex matched healthy control group. Three milliliter of Venous blood sample were collected in EDTA container from each subjects and separated using centrifuge to obtain plasma. IL-12 concentration was measured by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) in Ibn Sina University Research Center. The data was analyzed using statistical package of social science programmed (Version 20). students’ T test and one-way ANOVA test were used to compare between means. P-value significant when ≤0.05. Mean level of IL-12 was significantly increased in HBV patients (693.94± 898.9pg/ml) compared to control group (181.18±124.3 pg/ml) with (p-value 0.001). Mean level of IL-12 in hepatitis B patients was lower in males than female which is statistically significant (P-value 0.02). There was statistical significant correlation between IL-12 level and treated, vaccinated patients and patients receive blood transfusion (p-value 0.05, 0.036, 0.025) respectively .IL-12 level did not affected with age group, symptomatic and asymptomatic patients among case subject p.value showed insignificant correlation (P-value 0.5, 0.282) respectively .This study concluded that IL-12 concentration could be a useful prognostic marker for HBV infection.
