Serum type IV collagen level is predictive for esophageal varices in patients with severe alcoholic disease.
OBJECTIVE
To determine factors predictive for esophageal varices in severe alcoholic disease (SAD).


METHODS
Abdominal ultrasonography (US) was performed on 444 patients suffering from alcoholism. Forty-four patients found to have splenomegaly and/ or withering of the right liver lobe were defined as those with SAD. SAD patients were examined by upper gastrointestinal (UGI) endoscopy for the presence of esophageal varices. The existence of esophageal varices was then related to clinical variables.


RESULTS
Twenty-five patients (56.8%) had esophageal varices. A univariate analysis revealed a significant difference in age and type IV collagen levels between patients with and without esophageal varices. A logistic regression analysis identified type IV collagen as the only independent variable predictive for esophageal varices (P = 0.017). The area under the curve (AUC) for type IV collagen as determined by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) for predicting esophageal varices was 0.78.


CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that the level of type IV collagen has a high diagnostic accuracy for the detection of esophageal varices in SAD.
Mamori
Satoshi
S
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, the Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo 105-8461, Japan. mamori@jikei.ac.jp
Searashi
Yasuyuki
Y
Matsushima
Masato
M
Hashimoto
Kenichi
K
Uetake
Shinichiro
S
Matsudaira
Hiroshi
H
Ito
Shuji
S
Nakajima
Hisato
H
Tajiri
Hisao
H
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000097:blood* / Q000150:complications*; D019540:Area Under Curve; D024141:Collagen Type IV / Q000097:blood*; D004932:Esophageal and Gastric Varices / Q000097:blood* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000379:methods
D024141:Collagen Type IV