Background: Red cell distribution width (RDW), part of a routine complete blood count in a clinical laboratory, has been widely and routinely used in the diagnosis of various diseases. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between increased RDW and liver diseases and whether RDW is a new inflammatory marker for liver diseases in a Guangxi population.
Methods: A total of 735 patients were enrolled in our study, including 113 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 133 liver cirrhosis (LC) patients, 105 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), 55 alcoholic hepatitis (AH) patients, 44 chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients, and 285 healthy persons. The hematological and hepatic function parameters, other tumor biomarkers, and MELD grades of subjects were tested, and, then, comparisons were made between the tested indexes of the various groups using SPSS 17 software. Statistical significance was set at a p-value of less than 0.05.
Results: Of the five groups, the RDW values of the liver diseases groups were higher than those in the healthy group (p < 0.05), and the MELD grades of liver diseases patients were positive with RDW (p < 0.05). In addition, in the various liver disease groups, the RDW values were positive with HGB and positive or negative with different biomarkers in different groups (p < 0.05). Besides, except CHC, the area under the ROC curve and Youden index of the RDW liver diseases groups were significant (p < 0.001), and area under the ROC curve of AST, r-GT ALP, and GLB were of worth for predicting liver diseases (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: In cases of liver disease, RDW values were increased and were related with various biomarkers and MELD grades. RDW could be used as an inflammatory marker for predicting CHB, LC, HCC, and AH but not including CHC when combined with HGB, AST, r-GT ALP, and GLB.