A quantitative study of the relationship between levels of liver fibrosis markers in sera and fibrosis stages of liver tissues of patients with chronic hepatic diseases

Objectives To study the quantitative relationship between the levels of serum liver fibrosis markers and fibrosis stages of liver tissues in patients with chromc hepatic diseases.Methods In 118 patients with chronic hepatitis,fatty liver or cirrhosis,their Serum levels of LN,HA,PCⅢ and CⅣ were investigated by EIA and their liver histological changes were studied.The relationship between the levels of serum LN,HA, PCⅢ and CⅣ and the degrees of liver tissue fibrosis was analyzed quantitatively by using SPSS11.0.Results A correlation between the levels of serum LN,HA,PCⅢ and CIV and the histologically assessed grades of inflammatory activity was found(r= 0.394,0.449, 0.443,0.351,respectively,P＜0.01).The correlations between the levels of serum LN,HA,PCⅢ and CⅣ and the histologically assessed stages of liver fibrosis were strong(r=0.456,0.564,0.476,0.421 respectively,P＜0.01).The levels of serum LN,HA,PCⅢ and CIV of the patients with a stage 2 liver fibrosis were 110 ng/ml,110 ng/ml,100 ng/ml and 70 ng/ml respectively,with sensibilities of diagnosing stage 2 liver fibrosis at 70%,79%,79% and 74% respectively.Their specificities in diagnosing stage 2 liver fibrosis were 68%,72%,64% and 73% respectively.The levels of LN,HA,PCⅢ and CⅣ in serum of these patients diagnosing cut-off value in stage 4 liver fibrosis(early cirrhosis)were 130 ng/ml, 140 ng/ml,120 ng/ml and 70 ng/ml respectively.Their sensibility of diagnosing liver cirrhosis was 79%,93%,79% and 86% respectively.Their specificity of diagnosing liver cirrhosis was 66%,82%,72% and 61% respectively.As shown by the ROC curves in these patients,differentiating patients with cirrhosis or without cirrhosis,serum HA level was more valuable than LN,PCⅢ,CⅣ(the areas under the curves=0.938 vs 0.775,0.787,0.791)When serum HA was higher than 190 ng/ml,the veracity of diagnosing liver cirrhosis was 93%.Conclusions There is a certain quantitative relationship between the levels of LN,HA,PCⅢ and CⅣ in serum and the degrees of liver tissue fibrosis.The level of HA in serum is an important reference datum for early diagnosis of liver cirrhosis.