title: Immature platelet fraction measurement in patients with chronic liver disease: a convenient marker for evaluating cirrhotic change.
abstract: Platelet number is often used as an indicator of the severity of liver disease. Although inadequate thrombopoietin production and decreased platelet production have been proposed as major causes of cirrhotic thrombocytopenia, the underlying mechanism has not yet been fully clarified. We examined whether the measurement of the immature platelet fraction (IPF) in thrombocytopenic patients with liver dysfunction is useful as a rapid and noninvasive method for the differential diagnosis of chronic liver diseases. We examined 20 liver cirrhosis patients, 56 patients with chronic hepatitis, 9 patients with fatty liver, and 86 patients without liver disease. The percentage value of IPF (IPF%) was measured using an XE-2100 multiparameter automatic hematology analyzer. Using a receiver operating characteristic curve, we found diagnostic significance of the absolute platelet count and the absolute number of the IPF between cirrhotic patients and noncirrhotic patients, and developed a powerful multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA) function based on the platelet count and the IPF%. The diagnostic accuracy obtained by the MDA function was superior to that obtained by the absolute number of platelets and the IPF. We therefore propose our IPF% measurement for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Transfusion Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, Kagawa, Japan. nomurats@kms.ac.jp
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nomura
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kubota
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kitanaka
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kurokouchi
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Inage
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saigo
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Iseki
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Baba
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yamaoka
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Arai
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Taminato
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood*; D001792:Blood Platelets / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000166:cytology / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010976:Platelet Count; D012372:ROC Curve; D012015:Reference Standards; D013921:Thrombocytopenia / Q000175:diagnosis
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers