Plasma pentraxin 3 as novel diagnostic marker in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Objective : To assess the role of plasma pentraxin 3 (PTX-3) in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) among Egyptian patients. Background : NAFLD is a serious health concern and amounts to signi fi cant burden on health care systems. Patients and methods : A randomized controlled trial was conducted on 90 participants at the outpatient clinic and inpatient Internal Medicine Departments, Menou fi a University Hospitals. All included participants were divided into 70 patients with NAFLD and 20 control healthy persons. Blood pressure, weight, height, BMI, waist circumference, fasting blood glucose, prothrombin time, activated partial prothrombin time, international normalized ratio, liver enzymes, lipid pro fi le, and PTX-3 level were investigated. Results : There were signi fi cantly higher PTX-3 levels in both steatohepatitis and steatosis groups than the control group ( P < 0.001). Moreover, patients with steatosis had signi fi cantly higher PTX-3 levels than the control group ( P < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that PTX-3 is an excellent diagnostic marker in predicting steatosis cases from a healthy free cohort at a cut-off point more than 2.7745, with sensitivity 97%, speci fi city 75%, and area under the curve of 98%. Conclusion : Patients with steatohepatitis and steatosis showed signi fi cant increased PTX-3 levels with a signi fi cant positive correlation with respect to PTX-3 levels, BMI, and cholesterol levels when compared with the control group.