Effective use of FibroTest to generate decision trees in hepatitis C.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the usefulness of FibroTest to forecast scores by constructing decision trees in patients with chronic hepatitis C.


METHODS
We used the C4.5 classification algorithm to construct decision trees with data from 261 patients with chronic hepatitis C without a liver biopsy. The FibroTest attributes of age, gender, bilirubin, apolipoprotein, haptoglobin, alpha2 macroglobulin, and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase were used as predictors, and the FibroTest score as the target. For testing, a 10-fold cross validation was used.


RESULTS
The overall classification error was 14.9% (accuracy 85.1%). FibroTest's cases with true scores of F0 and F4 were classified with very high accuracy (18/20 for F0, 9/9 for F0-1 and 92/96 for F4) and the largest confusion centered on F3. The algorithm produced a set of compound rules out of the ten classification trees and was used to classify the 261 patients. The rules for the classification of patients in F0 and F4 were effective in more than 75% of the cases in which they were tested.


CONCLUSIONS
The recognition of clinical subgroups should help to enhance our ability to assess differences in fibrosis scores in clinical studies and improve our understanding of fibrosis progression.
Lau-Corona
Dana
D
Department of Experimental Medicine, School of Medicine, UNAM, General Hospital of Mexico, Mexico City 06726, Mexico.
Pineda
Luís Alberto
LA
Avilés
Héctor Hugo
HH
Gutiérrez-Reyes
Gabriela
G
Farfan-Labonne
Blanca Eugenia
BE
Núñez-Nateras
Rafael
R
Bonder
Alan
A
Martínez-García
Rosalinda
R
Corona-Lau
Clara
C
Olivera-Martínez
Marco Antonio
MA
Gutiérrez-Ruiz
Maria-Concepción
MC
Robles-Díaz
Guillermo
G
Kershenobich
David
D
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D016632:Apolipoprotein A-I / Q000378:metabolism; D001663:Bilirubin / Q000378:metabolism; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism; D003663:Decision Trees; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006242:Haptoglobins / Q000378:metabolism; D019698:Hepatitis C, Chronic / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D055815:Young Adult; D000511:alpha-Macroglobulins / Q000378:metabolism; D005723:gamma-Glutamyltransferase / Q000378:metabolism
D016632:Apolipoprotein A-I; D015415:Biomarkers; D006242:Haptoglobins; D000511:alpha-Macroglobulins; D005723:gamma-Glutamyltransferase; D001663:Bilirubin