title: Development of a non-invasive fibrosis test for chronic hepatitis B patients and comparison with other unpatented scores.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Despite the availability of patented non-invasive methods, evaluation of the degrees of liver fibrosis remains difficult when conducting a retrospective study. Such inadequacy is largely caused by requirement of biochemical parameters rarely performed in routine clinical tests. We developed a novel fibrosis HB-F score using commonly performed tests for HBV infected patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  424 patients with chronic HBV infection were included. Using clinical and virological data, HB-F score was developed from a training cohort (n = 213) and validated in a separate cohort (n = 211). The performance was compared with five other unpatented scores using ROC curves.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Univariate and multivariate analysis revealed that age, AST/ALT ratio, platelet count and prothrombin time prolongation were significantly associated with the ISHAK fibrosis score, and were used to calculate the HB-F score. When HB-F was used to assess prominent fibrosis and cirrhosis, the AUC was 0.81 and 0.80 respectively in the training cohort, and 0.80 and 0.76 respectively in the validation cohort. HB-F had the highest AUC compared with other scores. Furthermore, in assessing paired liver biopsies with increase or decrease of ISHAK scores, HB-F showed significant change in the same direction.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A new non-invasive score was developed, which could be used to assess severity of liver fibrosis in retrospective longitudinal studies in HBV patients.
authors.affiliation: Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chao-Wei
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Kung-Hao
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Shiu-Feng
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Kuo-Chien
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Tsao
authors.forename: Chau-Ting
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Yeh
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D019694:Hepatitis B, Chronic / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D008111:Liver Function Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged