الفهرس 
Introduction
Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Our study included One hundred eighty patients (60 patients with in the present study HCV-related LC and 120 patients with HCC on top of LCand 60 controls were enrolled in the study). Patients were recruited from the outpatient clinic of Tropical Medicine and Gastroenterology Department, Faculty of Medicine Assuit, Egypt, during the period between November 2014 and August 2015. All patients had chronic hepatitis C infection with detectable anti-HCV for more than 6 months and/or HCV RNA in serum and had clinical evidence suggestive of LC and/or significant ultrasound findings. Patients positive for hepatitis B surface antigen HBsAg) or serologic evidence of other chronic liver diseases as autoimmune hepatitis or metabolic diseases as Hemochromatosis or Wilson disease) were excluded.
In the present study the serum miR-34a level was significantly lower in HCC and LC patients compared to control group (P-value ≤ 0.001), with more decrease in late HCC patients [0.42 (0.34-0.93)] compared to early HCC group [0.88 (0.72-1.41)]. On the other hand, its target gene Hsp70 was significantly high level in cancer patients but not in the LC group compared to controls. Its serum level in LC was 0.99 (0.78-2.07), whereas the median and quartile levels in early and late HCC patients were 1.49 (0.61-2.8) and 2.03 (0.57-3.44), respectively. Analysis of Hsp70 promotor polymorphism (rs2763979; C/T) showed heterozygosity of all patients and controls in the current study population, thus did not render any effect on Hsp70 expression levels.
Most LC patients had Child score C while less than one third had B score. Comparing these two categories of patients revealed a significant lower expression of serum miR-34a in Child C compared to Child B patients (P-value < 0001).
Association of miR-34a and Hsp70 with clinicopathological and radiological characteristics in HCC group were studied.Serum miR-34a expression tended to decline with more advanced cancer stage (P-value = 0.001) and a higher number of liver masses (P-value = 0.001). On the contrary, its target gene Hsp70 expression showed significant up-regulation with cancer patients with a number of masses more than 4 (P-value = 0.011MiR-34a-Hsp70 interaction)In this study we predicted that Hsp70 genesHSPA1A and HSPA1B) to be one of the targets of miR-34a. Our Silico analysis results showed direct interaction between conserved 8-mer miR-34a seed region and 3’ end of HSPA1A and HSPA1B with mir SVR score of -0.2131 and 1.1247 respectively that combines alignment-based and energy-based algorithm (http://www.microRNA.org). In addition, Spearman’s rank correlation analysis revealed a moderate inverse relationship between miR-34a level and that of Hsp70 (r = -0.228, P = 0)