Comparison of LecT-Hepa and FibroScan for assessment of liver fibrosis in hepatitis B virus infected patients with different ALT levels

Background: FibroScan is one of the noninvasive techniques based on the transient elastography that can assess the progression of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis patients in daily clinical practice. Recently, LecT-Hepa was validated as a serological glycomarker correlating well with the fibrosis stage determined by liver biopsy, and was superior to many other noninvasive biochemical markers and tests. We compared the reliability of LecT-Hepa with that of FibroScan for evaluation of liver fibrosis. Methods: The effects of increased alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activities on LecT-Hepa and FibroScan were investigated. Results: The areas under the receiver-operating characteristic curves, sensitivity and specificity for detecting cirrhosis, which is one of the outcomes of fibrosis estimation, were 0.82, 72.5% and 78.2% of LecT-Hepa, 0.85, 87.0% and 74.1% of FibroScan; these did not differ significantly. The count distribution of LecT-Hepa in non-cirrhosis group or cirrhosis group did not differ between the patients grouped according to their ALT levels, whereas that of FibroScan was substantially affected. Conclusion: LecT-Hepa was confirmed as a reliable noninvasive test for the evaluation of liver fibrosis in hepatitis B virus-infected patients with comparable performance to that of FibroScan and proved to be unaffected by inflammation.