Noninvasive markers to diagnose cirrhosis in patients with HBeAg positive chronic hepatitis: Do new biomarkers improve the accuracy?

ObjectivesThe goal of the study was to clarify whether new biomarkers independently contribute to the diagnosis of cirrhosis.Design and methodsA total of 142 consecutive patients with HBeAg positive chronic hepatitis who underwent liver biopsy were recruited. The Cirrhosis Score (CS)-1 was derived from routine laboratory data only. The CS-2 was calculated using all correlates obtained from both routine laboratory data and 7 new biomarkers.ResultsA comparison of the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve between CS-1 [0.84 (95% CI, 0.74 to 0.94)] and CS-2 [0.86 (0.78 to 0.95)] showed no superior diagnostic accuracy of CS-2 over CS-1 (p = 0.24).ConclusionsNone of the new biomarkers had value in addition to readily available laboratory data for differentiating cirrhosis from HBeAg positive chronic hepatitis B.