Microvesicles and Monocytes to Predict Mortality of Patients with Cirrhosis

Chronic liver diseases related to viral hepatitis, metabolic syndrome or excessive alcohol consumption can evolve towards cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is responsible for 170 000 deaths per year in Europe. Initially asymptomatic and called "compensated" it can become "decompensated" with the developement of acute complications such as infections, ascites or variceal bleeding. The transition from compensated to decompensated cirrhosis is associated with a reduction in survival from 95 to 55% at 1 year. The only curative treatment for cirrhosis is liver transplantation (LT). Liver transplants are allocated according to the severity of the patients. Despite a modest prognostic value (area under the ROC curve = 0.7 to predict the risk of death), graft allocation is based on the MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) score including INR, bilirubin and serum creatinine. In 2014, 11.5% of registered patients died on the liver transplant waiting list, illustrating the need for biomarkers that predict death and improve MELD-based prediction. Microvesicles are membrane vesicles released in extracellular space during cell activation or apoptosis. Our team showed that circulating levels of hepatocyte microvesicles increase with the severity of cirrhosis and predict survival at 6 months independently of MELD score in a cohort of 242 patients with cirrhosis. Type 1 interferons (IFN-1) are mediators of inflammation, which is excessively activated in cirrhosis. Our team has shown that a gene signature (IFN score) measured in the immune cells of 101 patients with cirrhosis is able to predict 6 month-survival independently of the MELD score. Thus, the investigators hypothesize that a composite score combining the level of circulating hepatocyte microvesicles, the IFN score and the MELD score could improve the prediction of survival in patients with severe cirrhosis. The aim of this study is to compare the prognostic performance for the cumulative incidence of death at 6 months of a com