Role of serotonin in development of esophageal and gastric fundal varices in patients with liver cirrhosis

This study was conducted in internal medicine department, zagazig University to investigate the role of serotonin in development of esophageal and gastric fundal varices as a result of increased portal pressure due to its vasoactive effect.Sixty patients with liver cirrhosis and twenty healthy controls were included in this study. All patients of the study were subjected to pelvi-abdominal ultrasound, upper GI endoscopy & serum serotonin level beside other routine investigations.We observed that HCV was the cause of liver cirhhosis in 88.3% of patients while HBV was the cause in 11.7% of patients.Gastric varices was detected in 13.3% of patients, OV grade I was detected in 15% of patients , OV grade II in 30 % , OV grade III in 20 % of patients , while OV grade IV was detected in 21.7% of patients.We confirmed the previous reports of increased serum serotonin in patients with liver cirrhosis.We also observed thatthere was no difference in serum serotonin between patients with liver cirrhosis secondary to HCV and patients with cirrhosis secondary to HBV.Our results also verified no significant difference between the serotonin concentration in plasma in relation to the size of esophageal varices. However, the mean plasma free serotonin level was higher in patients with esophageal varices than in patients without varices. Furthermore, the correlation of plasma serotonin concentration and fundal varices was highly significant..