Topic Highlight
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 14, 2016; 22(18): 4427-4437
Published online May 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i18.4427
Thrombin activation and liver inflammation in advanced hepatitis C virus infection
Emilio González-Reimers, Geraldine Quintero-Platt, Candelaria Martín-González, Onán Pérez-Hernández, Lucía Romero-Acevedo, Francisco Santolaria-Fernández
Emilio González-Reimers, Geraldine Quintero-Platt, Candelaria Martín-González, Onán Pérez-Hernández, Lucía Romero-Acevedo, Francisco Santolaria-Fernández, Servicio de Medicina Interna, Hospital Universitario de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, 38320 Canary Islands, Spain
Author contributions: González-Reimers E, Martín-González C, Pérez-Hernández O, Romero-Acevedo L and Quintero-Platt G made the review and drafted the manuscript; and Santolaria-Fernández F revised it.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript. They also declare that they have not received any funding for this study.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Emilio González-Reimers, MD, PhD, Servicio de Medicina Interna, Hospital Universitario de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna, Ofra s/n, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, 38320 Canary Islands, Spain. egonrey@ull.es
Telephone: +34-922-678600
Received: February 25, 2016
Peer-review started: February 25, 2016
First decision: March 21, 2016
Revised: March 30, 2016
Accepted: April 15, 2016
Article in press: April 15, 2016
Published online: May 14, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Liver cirrhosis may be considered a prothrombotic condition despite it being associated with a low platelet count and deranged synthesis of clotting factors. When hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the etiological factor of liver cirrhosis, intrahepatic coagulation may be enhanced by several direct actions of HCV on the clotting system, platelet aggregation, and altered anticoagulation. The excessive thrombin generation may be related to increased fibrogenesis both by a direct effect of thrombin on hepatic stellate cells and fibrosis related to ischemic parenchymal extinction.