Improvement of liver fibrosis verification using new minimally invasive markers in patients with chronic diffuse liver diseases

The aim of our research was to obtain new minimally invasive serum markers of fibrotic changes of liver in patients with chronic diffuse liver diseases of different etiology and compare them with traditional markers. 364 patients aged 30 to 66 years were examined: 221 women (60.7%) and 143 men (39.3%). Depending on the etiological factors, all patients were divided into 4 groups: group I consisted of 108 patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), group II – 143 patients with chronic hepatitis associated with virus C (CHC), group III – 56 patients with alcoholic liver disease (ALD), group IV – 57 patients with toxic drug-induced hepatitis (TH). The control group consisted of 30 practically healthy people. Using correlation and ROC-analyzes, we obtained minimally invasive diagnostics markers that show the risk of developing liver fibrosis. For patients with NAFLD these were the levels of HOMA-IR, TNFα/IL-10 and α1-acid glycopeptide content, which are better in quality of the diagnostic model than the traditional Forns index, APRI, FIB-4, AAR. For patients with CHC, these were the protein-bound hydroxyproline (HPp/b) /HPf ratio, phospholipids content, and IL-6, CD4+ levels, which are better diagnostic models than the traditional Forns index, APRI, FIB-4, AAR. The following markers were obtained for patients with ALD – TNFα levels, HPp/b and glycosaminoglycans content, which are better diagnostic models than the traditional Forns index, APRI, FIB-4, AAR. For patients with TH, these were medium molecular weight peptides content, IL-6/IL-10 ratio and CD4+/CD8+, which are better diagnostic models than the traditional Forns index, APRI, FIB-4, AAR. Thus, new minimally invasive markers of fibrosis in patients with chronic diffuse liver diseases have been obtained.