The correlation between serum cytokine levels and liver cirrhosis in chronic hepatitis B patients: A meta-analysis

Background: The harm of liver cirrhosis (LC) is serious, and the development of LC is primarily resulted from chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) in high-risk such as China and Africa and chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) in developed areas such as United States. Currently, there were 360 million chronic HBV-infected people on a global scale, and 30 million chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients in China. In general, cytokines can regulate immune responses or contribute to deleterious tissue injury. However, the effects of these cytokines reported were controversial. Therefore, we executed a meta-analysis evaluating whether these cytokines can change the development risk of LC.