Background: Liver fibrosis is the early pathological manifestation of various chronic liver diseases (including schistosomiasis, alcoholic, viral, nonalcoholic, fatty liver, etc.), which can progress to cirrhosis and even liver cancer. Out of the 7.7 billion world population, approximately 2 billion individuals have evidence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection; of these, 350 to 400 million suffer from chronic HBV infection, accounting for about 5% of the global population. The global prevalence of hepatitis C is 3%. These figures indicate that liver fibrosis is quite common.
Methods: 98 patients with liver fibrosis were included in this study. The serum chitinase-3 Like Protein-1 (CHI3L1) level was measured by the double antibody Sandwich ELISA method.
Results: Serum levels of CHI3L1 were significantly different between no-fibrosis and fibrosis groups (P < 0.01). There was a strong correlation between the levels of CHI3L1, elastometry, hyaluronan, CIV (P < 0.01) and age and sex, TBIL, DBIL, ALB, AST, ALT, GGT, ALP, PLT, LN, PIINP, FIB-4, and APRI (P < 0.05). The expression of CHI3L1 was different from fibrosis grades S1, S3, and S4 (P < 0.05, P < 0.001). The expression of CHI3L1 was significantly different between F1 and F4 (P < 0.05). Serum CHI3L1 expression level can be a valuable metric for diagnosing liver fibrosis, with an AUC value of 0.812. Out of the 98 patients who had undergone liver puncture, 79 patients (30.38%) had ALT ≤ 2ULN.
Conclusions: The expression level of serum CHI3L1 was significantly higher in patients with liver fibrosis than that in patients without liver fibrosis. The expression levels of serum CHI3L1 were different in different grades of liver fibrosis and increased with the severity of liver fibrosis. Serum CHI3L1 can distinguish early stage (S1) of liver fibrosis from late stage (S3-4) of liver fibrosis. Serum CHI3L1 combined with HA is even more effective in the diagnosis of S2-4 hepatic fibrosis. The diagnostic efficacy of serum CHI3L1 in patients with ALT ≤ 2ULN was better than that of the other non-invasive diagnostic models.