ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Molecular Viral Pathogenesis
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1601678
This article is part of the Research TopicCytokine Signaling and Innate Host Defense in Modulation of Viral Infections and The Viral EvasionView all 5 articles
Detecting Early Kidney Injury due to Host Virus Interaction Response in treatment-naive CHB -a pilot study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Research and Teaching, Bhopal Memorial Hospital & Research Centre, Bhopal, India
- 2Department of GI Surgery, ex: Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
- 3Department of Nephrology, ex: Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
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Purpose Clinical evidence suggests that chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients have an increased risk of renal impairment due to inflammation induced by virus-host interaction. We aimed to evaluate and validate a set of protein-biomarkers singularly and in combination for early detection of subclinical kidney injury in CHB patients naive to antiretroviral therapy. Methods This work is part of a prospective cross-sectional study for which sixty-nine HBsAg positive, treatment-naive CHB patients with an equal number of age-matched healthy volunteers were considered. At diagnosis, serum-creatinine (sCr), urea, alanine-transaminase, aspartate-transaminase, cystatin-C (sCys-C), neutrophil-gelatinase-associated-lipocalin (sNGAL), fetuin-A (sFet-A), and urinary interleukin-18-binding protein (uIL-18BP), kidney-injury-molecule-1 (uKIM-1) levels were determined.Results There was a significant elevation in the concentrations of three proteins in our CHB cohort (sCys-C, sNGAL, and uIL-18BP; p<0.0001) while sFet-A was down-regulated (p=0.0038) as compared to the control group. A receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed an Area under the curve of 0.923 for sCys-C and 0.811 for sNGAL, which improved to 0.984 when all four indicators were combined in a panel to discriminate the onset of renal injury incited by inflammatory response in CHB with 97.1% sensitivity at 91.3% specificity. Additionally, only sCys-C and sNGAL differed significantly among the phases of CHB infection (p=0.047, p=0.039, respectively). Conclusions This novel noninvasive diagnostic screen is expedient in detecting inflammation and early kidney injury before a rise in sCr and can aid in predicting renal outcomes in CHB patients.
Keywords: biomarker, kidney injury, Hepatitis B virus, Chronic hepatitis B, Inflammation
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gandhi, Peter, Varshney, Atlani and Kewal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Puneet Gandhi, Department of Research and Teaching, Bhopal Memorial Hospital & Research Centre, Bhopal, India
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