Levels of alanine aminotransferase confound use of transient elastography to diagnose fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection.

ABSTRACT:

Background & aims

Hepatic elastography (HE) is a noninvasive technique that measures liver stiffness and is used to diagnose hepatic fibrosis. It can help patients who are thought to have early-stage disease avoid a staging liver biopsy, but only when confounding variables that increase liver stiffness are excluded. Chronic inflammation from hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is not considered to be one of these variables.

Methods

We identified 684 patients with HCV and METAVIR fibrosis scores of 0-2 from a prospective, multi-institutional study of liver stiffness in 2880 patients with chronic liver disease. Patients were 49.6 ± 9.0 years old, 64.3% were male, and they had an average body mass index of 26.7 ± 4.1 kg/m(2).

Results

In a multivariate analysis, inflammatio

SUBMITTER: Tapper EB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3402604 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature