Baseline measurements of WFA(+)-M2BP represent a simple and reliable noninvasive surrogate marker of liver fibrosis and prognosis in patients with PBC.

CAP may be a promising tool for quantifying hepatic fat content in NAFLD patients with none-to-mild obesity and liver fibrosis. Further improvement of CAP performance is needed for the NAFLD patients with BMI of more than 28 kg/m(2) or significant hepatic fibrosis.

Abstract

Serum sodium concentration below 139 mEq/L and MELD-Na score above 10.5 may be predictive markers for mortality in patients with cirrhosis despite being within normal ranges. These markers may help to better assess and manage the prognosis of patients with cirrhosis in Japan.

The development of simple, noninvasive markers of liver fibrosis is urgently needed for primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). This study examined the ability of several serum biomarkers of cell death to estimate fibrosis and prognosis in PBC. A cohort of 130 patients with biopsy-proven PBC and 90 healthy subjects were enrolled. We assessed the utility of the M30 ELISA, which detects caspase-cleaved cytokeratin-18 (CK-18) fragments and is representative of apoptotic cell death, as well as the M65 and newly developed M65 Epideath (M65ED) ELISAs, which detect total CK-18 as indicators of overall cell death, in predicting clinically relevant fibrosis stage. All 3 cell death biomarkers were significantly higher in patients with PBC than in healthy controls and were significantly correlated with fibrosis stage. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the M65 and M65ED assays for differentiation among significant fibrosis, severe fibrosis, and cirrhosis were 0.66 and 0.76, 0.66 and 0.73, and 0.74 and 0.82, respectively. In multivariate analysis, high M65ED (hazard ratio 6.13; 95% confidence interval 1.18–31.69; P = 0.031) and severe fibrosis (hazard ratio 7.45; 95% confidence interval 1.82–30.51; P = 0.005) were independently associated with liver-related death, transplantation, or decompensation. High serum M65ED was also significantly associated with poor outcome in PBC (log-rank test; P = 0.001). Noninvasive cell death biomarkers appear to be clinically useful in predicting fibrosis in PBC. Moreover, the M65ED assay may represent a new surrogate marker of adverse disease outcome.