The association of serum markers of fibrosis and development of liver cirrhosis in chronic hepatitis B patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis

AbstractLiver fibrosis is reversible by immune treatments in the early stages of cirrhosis development, but not in later stages. At present, the value of the markers for indicating an increased risk of cirrhosis is controversial, and thus we executed this meta-analysis.Retrospective and longitudinal studies of chronic hepatitis B patients were retrieved from PubMed, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, OVID, and EBSCO. Mean differences with 95% confidence intervals of four fibrosis markers were calculated using Review Manager 5.1.Twenty-one studies that included 732 cases and 1025 controls were analyzed. The pooled mean differences of the serum markers with 95% confidence interval were hyaluronic acid 229.95 (173.94–285.96) ng/mL, laminin 78.73 (45.86–111.60) ng/mL, type III precollagen 69.10 (49.55–88.65) ng/mL, and type IV collagen 97.12 (62.32–131.92) ng/mL.Elevated serum hyaluronic acid, laminin, type III precollagen and type IV collagen increased the risk of liver cirrhosis development in chronic hepatitis B p...