SERPINE1 and hepatitis C virus infection: Table 2 shows the comparison of evaluated cytokines between the control group and hepatitis C patients at baseline. Overall, the patients presented increased serum levels of cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors when compared with the control group; however, only CCL-4 (P = 0.001), CXCL-10 (P = 0.0001), IFN-γ (P = 0.002), PAI-1 (P = 0.008), and suPAR (P = 0.02) were statistically different between the groups. In contrast, we observed significantly lower TGF-β levels in chronic hepatitis C group (P = 0.004) (Table 2).