A study of the circulating fibroblast growth factor 21 as a novel noninvasive biomarker of hepatic injury in genotype-4 chronic hepatitis C: Egyptian patients and their response to direct-acting antiviral agents.

BACKGROUND: Fibroblast growth factor (FGF) 21 was reported to be induced by different injurious agents, including chronic hepatitis C (CHC) virus, affecting the liver. The aims of this study were to evaluate the FGF21 levels in CHC patients before and after the treatment with direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) in comparison to that in control subjects and to correlate these levels with insulin resistance (IR), lipid profile, and fibrosis stages. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We studied 75 naive CHC patients and 40 age- and gender-matched healthy control subjects. Patients were divided into five groups based on the severity of fibrosis as detected by Fibroscan as follows: F0, n=2; F1, n=13; F2, n=23; F3, n=16; F4, n=21. We estimated the FGF21 levels at the start of the study for all the participants and for the patients only at the end of treatment with simisipivir (SIM) and sofosbuvir (SOF). These levels were compared between the patients and the control subjects and also for the patients before and after the treatment with DAAs. The FGF21 levels were correlated to IR, lipid profile, and stages of liver fibrosis. RESULTS: The FGF21, fasting blood sugar (FBS), fasting insulin, and homeostasis model of IR (HOMA-IR) were significantly higher in CHC patients compared to control (5.04±0.75 vs 4.7±0.52, 20.15±5.13 vs 13.15±4.2, 4.49±1.28 vs 2.72±0.87, and 123.7±52.6 vs 21.8±8.8; P≤0.01, P≤0.001, P≤0.001, and P≤0.001, respectively). The posttreatment FGF21 levels were significantly reduced when compared to the pretreatment levels (123.7±52.5 vs 60.5±32.7, P≤0.001). FGF21 levels showed significant negative correlation with FBS and positive correlation with serum albumin (P≤0.05 and P≤0.003, respectively). The multiple linear regression analysis revealed that serum albumin, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), and the stage of liver fibrosis were independent risk factors for FGF21. CONCLUSION: Besides its metabolic modulator role, FGF21 strongly introduced itself as a novel biomarker of hepatic injury in Egyptian, genotype-4, CHC patients.

[Pathomimia in upper limb]. / La pathomimie au membre supérieur.

Pathomimia, or factitious disorders, are characterized by producing symptoms voluntarily with the intention of playing the role of the patient. Inspite of being considerd as a psychatric disorder, pathomimuia is often encountered in the daily professional life of doctors without being recognized or diagnosed. There are various clinical aspects of pathomimia. The items that decide the orientation of the diagnosis are essentially the uncommon and odd expression of the reported symptoms, A capricious evolution as well as the multiplicity of the past medical cases. We report a group of five patients who were followed and treated between the years 2000 and 2003. This group was composed of three men and two women with an average age of 30 years. In three cases, we found the notion of skin injury. In one case, we noted a median nerve lesion in the elbow and once in the right upper member. The evolution was performed towards recidives of the initial symptomatology with more or less long periods of improvements.