Sex Differences in Spontaneous Degranulation Activity of Intrahepatic Natural Killer Cells during Chronic Hepatitis B: Association with Estradiol Levels

Major sex differences are observed in the prevalence, intensity, and severity of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Here, we investigated degranulation activity of circulating and intrahepatic natural killer (NK) cells from HBV and HCV chronically infected patients before any treatment (). The frequency of CD107+ NK cells in the female liver was significantly higher compared to that in males during chronic HBV infection () and correlated with the plasma levels of estradiol (correlation coefficient ; ). Our results clearly show sex differences in degranulation activity of intrahepatic NK cells of HBV-infected patients. This probably contributes to the ability of females to better deal with HBV disease.

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