Hepatitis C virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of individuals with isolated anti-hepatitis C virus antibody reactivity

✍ Scribed by Tram N.Q. Pham; Tomasz I. Michalak

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 55 KB
• Volume: 48
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.22384

✦ Synopsis

We are very pleased about the interest and the debate elicited by our article "Acute viral hepatitis increases liver stiffness values measured by transient elastography" 1 and we read with attention Ze-Zhou Song's letter to the editor. First of all, we must say that we are very sorry that Dr. Song had been concerned about some aspects of our manuscript, likely due to an insufficient understanding of the study purpose and design. Just to reassure Dr. Song, we are pleased to provide the following comments. As clearly stated in the introduction of our paper, the aim of the study was to provide further evidence about the contribution of necroinflammation to liver stiffness measured by transient elastography. Patients with acute viral hepatitis without a previous history of liver disease were specifically selected in order to elucidate the role of necroinflammation. In other words, acute viral hepatitis was employed as a model of extensive necroinflammation in the absence of a fibrotic background. As our fellow citizen Niccolo `Machiavelli would say, "The ends justify the means".

The conclusions of our study do not reflect at all Dr. Song's concerns about the utility of this noninvasive methodology for assessing the fibrotic evolution of chronic liver disease. We are actually convinced that this is an excellent tool, especially when confounding factors and particularly those related to disease activity are carefully