Study of serum uric acid in liver cirrhosis and its correlation with Child Turcotte Pugh, MELD and UKELD score

Background: Liver cirrhosis is one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality. The availability of liver transplant has stressed on the need for accurate prognostication. Various scoring systems have been developed for the same and studies have been conducted to find the correlation of various biochemical parameters with these.Methods: This is a cross sectional study conducted on 100 patients with stigmata of liver cell failure on clinical examination and substantiated by imaging. Serum Uric acid and other biochemical parameters were determined. Child Turcotte Pugh Score, Model for End Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score, United Kingdom Model for End Stage Liver Disease (UKELD) score was calculated and the correlation obtained.Results: The study showed significant, positive correlation between uric acid level and CTP, MELD and UKELD score. The study also showed the positive correlation of serum uric acid with various biochemical parameters such as total bilirubin, Prothrombin time/ International Normalized Ratio (PT/INR) and serum creatinine and negative correlation with serum albumin, with a significant p value. The mean serum uric acid was found to be 4.79(4.79± 2.0)Conclusions: The study showed a correlation between serum uric acid and the various available scoring systems such as CTP score, MELD and UKELD score. Hence serum uric acid can be used as an alternative prognostic parameter in predicting the severity and prognosis of cirrhosis of liver.