Figure 2.

HCV and fibrosis analysis with human liver slices. (A) All eight chronic HCV samples (blue color) were confirmed with positive HCV RNA detection. None of the DAA cured subjects (red color) or the non-infected controls (black color) was positive for HCV RNA. The limit of reliable detection (LoD) was 1.2 IU/50 ng liver total RNA. (B) HCV RNA remained robustly detected in the day 7 liver slices cultured from chronically HCV-infected patients. The viral load between day 0 and day 7 liver slices was not statistically significant (P = 0.4688, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test). (C) Fibrosis analysis of the day 0 ex vivo liver specimens with trichrome staining and picrosirius red staining indicated that in DAA-treated, and now HCV-negative patients in this study there was persistent fibrosis, similar to untreated HCV and different from tissue without a history of HCV infection. The scoring system was based on the Scheuer/Batts-Ludwig method. The fibrosis score included 10 non-infected patients, 4 chronic HCV patients, and 8 DAA-treated patients. In other words, 4 out of the 7 HCV+ subjects, and 8 out of the 10 DAA-cured subjects were analyzed. Due to tissue availability, not all subjects could be analyzed in this way. The minimum and maximum data points for each subgroup are shown. Statistical significance was based on Mann-Whitney test. **P < 0.01. ††P < 0.01.