Badwei Nourhan
Tropical Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Hepatoma Group, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11588, Egypt.
ILIVER. 2024 Feb 6;3(1):100078. doi: 10.1016/j.iliver.2024.100078. eCollection 2024 Mar.
Chronic liver disease of various aetiologies with underlying cirrhosis is a serious cause of liver-related morbidity and mortality globally. The emerging role of non-invasive diagnostic/therapeutic tools in different stages of liver disease represents a challenge and an area of great interest for many researchers, which could differ in the clinical outcome of liver disease patients. Over a decade, several studies have evaluated the emerging role of circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) as biomarkers and therapeutic targets in different liver diseases; They are small membrane-encapsulated particles that can act as potent vehicles via their cargos between different hepatic cell types and also between organs, because of their ability to transfer proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids to affect the recipient cells' related physiological functions. Hence, the issues related to the potential use of EVs as biomarkers in liver disease diagnosis, prognosis, and even to assess the response to treatment, have been handled in our review concluding that EVs have shown promising results as potential diagnostic tools and for further evaluation as therapeutic targets.
各种病因导致的伴有潜在肝硬化的慢性肝病是全球肝脏相关发病和死亡的严重原因。非侵入性诊断/治疗工具在肝病不同阶段的新作用对许多研究人员来说既是挑战也是极具兴趣的领域，这可能会使肝病患者的临床结果有所不同。十多年来，多项研究评估了循环细胞外囊泡（EVs）作为不同肝病生物标志物和治疗靶点的新作用；它们是小的膜包裹颗粒，由于能够转移蛋白质、脂质和核酸以影响受体细胞的相关生理功能，可通过其货物在不同肝细胞类型之间以及器官之间充当有效的载体。因此，我们的综述探讨了与EVs作为肝病诊断、预后甚至评估治疗反应的潜在生物标志物相关的问题，得出结论认为，EVs作为潜在诊断工具已显示出有前景的结果，并有待作为治疗靶点进行进一步评估。
