Exploration of Immunology

Table 2. Serum cytokine levels by fibrosis stage.

Cytokine (unit)	F0 (n = 22)	F1 (n = 20)	F2 (n = 18)	F3 (n = 15)	F4 (n = 15)	P-trend
IL-6 (pg/mL)	138 (92–205)	267 (189–344)	422 (310–556)	655 (498–810)	798 (645–1020)	< 0.001
IL-8 (pg/mL)	45 (33–58)	67 (52–81)	89 (71–108)	112 (95–130)	135 (118–155)	< 0.001
TNF-α (pg/mL)	310 (245–378)	385 (320–450)	470 (402–538)	542 (475–610)	620 (550–695)	< 0.001
TGF-β (ng/mL)	1.8 (1.3–2.4)	2.6 (2.1–3.2)	3.8 (3.2–4.5)	5.1 (4.4–5.9)	6.4 (5.7–7.1)	< 0.001

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Data presented as median [interquartile range (IQR)]. IL-6: interleukin-6; TGF-β: transforming growth factor-beta; TNF-α: tumor necrosis factor-alpha.

Supplementary materials

The supplementary tables for this article are available at: https://www.explorationpub.com/uploads/Article/file/1003270_sup_1.pdf.

Declarations

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the nursing and laboratory personnel at the participating hospitals for their invaluable assistance in patient recruitment and specimen processing.

Author contributions

ZNA: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing—original draft. MAK: Conceptualization, Supervision, Validation, Writing—review & editing. YHM: Resources, Data curation, Writing—review & editing. All authors read and approved the submitted version.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The study protocol was approved by the Scientific and Ethical Committee of the Iraqi Board for Medical Specializations (Ref. 2023-HEP-11), an institution distinct from the funding body; the shared “HEP-11” suffix reflects independent departmental coding and is coincidental. Supporting documentation is available on request. This study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent to participate

Informed consent to participation in the study was obtained from all participants.

Consent to publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Funding

This work was supported by grant No. 2024-HEP-11 from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Republic of Iraq. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Open Exploration maintains a neutral stance on jurisdictional claims in published institutional affiliations and maps. All opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the author(s) and do not represent the stance of the editorial team or the publisher.

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