蛋白糖基化及肝病.pdfVIP

Journal of Hepatology 50 (2009) 592–603 /locate/jhep Special article Alteration of protein glycosylation in liver diseasesq 1 1 2,3 1,* Bram Blomme , Christophe Van Steenkiste , Nico Callewaert , Hans Van Vlierberghe 1Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology, Ghent University Hospital, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium 2 Unit for Molecular Glycobiology, Department for Molecular Biomedical Research, VIB, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium 3Department of Biochemistry, Physiology and Microbiology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Chronic liver diseases are a serious health problem worldwide. The current gold standard to assess structural liver dam- age is through a liver biopsy which has several disadvantages. A non-invasive, simple and non-expensive test to diagnose liver pathology would be highly desirable. Protein glycosylation has drawn the attention of many researchers in the search for an objective feature to achieve this goal. Glycosylation is a posttranslational modification of many secreted proteins and it has been known for decades that structural changes in the glycan structures of serum proteins are an indication for liver damage. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of this altered protein glycosylation in different etiologies of liver fibrosis / cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Although individual liver diseases have their own specific markers, the same modifications seem to continuously reappear in all liver diseases: hyperf