Noninvasive markers to diagnose cirrhosis in patients with HBeAg positive chronic hepatitis: Do new biomarkers improve the accuracy?

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study was to clarify whether new biomarkers independently contribute to the diagnosis of cirrhosis.

DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 142 consecutive patients with HBeAg positive chronic hepatitis who underwent liver biopsy were recruited. The Cirrhosis Score (CS)-1 was derived from routine laboratory data only. The CS-2 was calculated using all correlates obtained from both routine laboratory data and 7 new biomarkers.

RESULTS: A comparison of the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve between CS-1 [0.84 (95% CI, 0.74 to 0.94)] and CS-2 [0.86 (0.78 to 0.95)] showed no superior diagnostic accuracy of CS-2 over CS-1 (p=0.24).

CONCLUSIONS: None of the new biomarkers had value in addition to readily available laboratory data for differentiating cirrhosis from HBeAg positive chronic hepatitis B.