title: Simple surrogate index of the fibrosis stage in chronic hepatitis C patients using platelet count and serum albumin level.
abstract: This study was conducted to develop a simple surrogate index comprised of routinely available laboratory tests to reflect the histological fibrosis stage. Clinical characteristics and laboratory data from 368 and 249 consecutive patients with chronic hepatitis C, a training cohort and a validation cohort, respectively, were retrospectively evaluated. Platelet (Plt) count and albumin (Alb) level contributed to the discrimination of the respective fibrosis stages. We derived the fibrosis index (FI), FI = 8.0-0.01 x Plt (10(3)/microliter) - Alb (g/dl), from a multiple regression model. FI significantly correlated with the histological fibrosis stage in both the initial and validation cohort at rho=0.691 and rho=0.661, respectively (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, p<0.0001). The sensitivity and positive predictive value of FI at a cutoff value < 2.10 for predicting fibrosis stage F0-1 were 66.8% and 78.8% in the initial cohort and 68.5% and 63.6% in the validation cohort, respectively. Corresponding values of FI at a cutoff value > or = 3.30 for the prediction of F4 were 67.7% and 75.0% in the initial cohort and 70.8% and 81.0% in the validation cohort. The fibrosis index comprised of platelet count and albumin level reflected the histological fibrosis stage in patients with chronic hepatitis C.
authors: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama 700-8558, Japan.
authors: Takeyuki
authors: T
authors: Ohta
authors: Kohsaku
authors: K
authors: Sakaguchi
authors: Akiko
authors: A
authors: Fujiwara
authors: Shin-ichi
authors: S
authors: Fujioka
authors: Yoshiaki
authors: Y
authors: Iwasaki
authors: Yasuhiro
authors: Y
authors: Makino
authors: Yasuyuki
authors: Y
authors: Araki
authors: Yasushi
authors: Y
authors: Shiratori