Intrahepatic inflammatory genes with altered expression during HCV/HIV-1 coinfection vs HCV infection.

A real-time PCR-based array was used to analyze intrahepatic inflammatory profiles in the liver biopsy specimens from HCV-infected (n = 16), HCV/HIV-1 coinfected (n = 8), and uninfected (n = 8) donors. A heat map illustrates two-dimensional hierarchical clustering of 84 inflammation-related genes including 23 inflammatory cytokine genes, 7 cytokine receptor genes, 31 chemokine genes, 12 chemokine receptor genes, and 11 other genes involved in inflammatory response (PAHS-011Z, SABiosciences, Frederick, MD, ). Genes were identified as differentially regulated in infected vs uninfected individuals by analysis of variance at a 95% confidence level. Increased and decreased expression of specific genes is illustrated by red and green, respectively, while black indicates no change.