Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Apr 27, 2025; 17(4): 105660
Published online Apr 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i4.105660
Correlation between the interleukin-36 subfamily and gut microbiota in patients with liver cirrhosis: Implications for gut-liver axis imbalance
Yi-Zhi Pan, Wan-Ting Chen, Hao-Ran Jin, Zhen Liu, Ying-Ying Gu, Xin-Ruo Wang, Jue Wang, Jing-Jing Lin, Yan Zhou, Lan-Man Xu
Yi-Zhi Pan, Wan-Ting Chen, Hao-Ran Jin, Zhen Liu, Ying-Ying Gu, Jue Wang, Jing-Jing Lin, Yan Zhou, Lan-Man Xu, Department of Infectious Diseases and Liver Diseases, Lihuili Hospital of Ningbo University, Ningbo 315000, Zhejiang Province, China
Yi-Zhi Pan, Xin-Ruo Wang, Lan-Man Xu, Department of Infectious Diseases and Liver Diseases, People’s Hospital of Ningbo University, Ningbo 315000, Zhejiang Province, China
Wan-Ting Chen, Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Ningbo Hangzhou Bar Hospital, Ningbo 315000, Zhejiang Province, China
Co-first authors: Yi-Zhi Pan and Wan-Ting Chen.
Author contributions: Pan YZ is responsible for conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, and writing-original draft; Chen WT and Jin HR is responsible for conceptualization, methodology, validation, investigation, data curation, and writing-original draft; Pan YZ, Liu Z, Gu YY, Wang XR, Wang J, Lin JJ and Zhou Y is responsible for investigation and resources; Xu LM is responsible for resources, supervision, and writing-review & editing. Pan YZ and Chen WT contributed equally to this work as co-first authors.
Supported by Key Project of the Ningbo Natural Science Foundation, Zhejiang Province, China, No. 2022J253; Key Technology R&D Project of Ningbo City, No. 2023Z208; Traditional Chinese Medicine project, Zhejiang Province, No. 2024ZF028; and the Key Project of Health Science and Technology Foundation, Zhejiang Province, China, No. WKJ-ZJ-2551.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Ningbo Medical Center Lihuili Hospital (Approval Number: 2022PJ064). The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, and all participants provided written informed consent prior to enrollment.
Informed consent statement: All participants involved in this study provided written informed consent prior to enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: Our original contributions are reflected in the paper/supplementary material. For in-depth inquiries, the corresponding authors can be contacted directly.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lan-Man Xu, MD, PhD, Chief Physician, Professor, Department of Infectious Diseases and Liver Diseases, Lihuili Hospital of Ningbo University, No. 1111 Jiangnan Road, High-tech Zone, Ningbo 315000, Zhejiang Province, China. 13587646315@163.com
Received: February 5, 2025
Revised: March 20, 2025
Accepted: April 1, 2025
Published online: April 27, 2025
Processing time: 81 Days and 1.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This study investigated the clinical relevance of serum interleukin-36 (IL-36) subfamily levels and their correlation with gut microbiota in 61 patients with liver cirrhosis (LC) and 29 healthy controls. We found that IL-36α, IL-36γ, IL-36Ra, and IL-38 Levels were significantly higher in cirrhosis patients and strongly correlated with disease progression. These cytokines may serve as novel predictive markers for LC. Our findings highlight the potential of IL-36 subfamily members as diagnostic biomarkers, contributing valuable insights to the field.