Decreased natural killer activity in patients with liver cirrhosis

Natural killer (NK) activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis (LC) (30 cases), patients with other, non-malignant diseases (41 cases), and healthy subjects (36 cases) were investigated using 51Cr-labelled CCRF-CEM and K562 target cells. NK activity in patients with LC was lower than that in healthy subjects and that in patients with other, non-malignant diseases. The differences were statistically significant by Student's t-test and the Wilcoxon rank test. There was no difference of NK activity between serologically hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)-positive and -negative patients.