Objective: The easy liver fibrosis test (eLIFT) is a novel index to assess advanced liver fibrosis in chronic liver diseases. We aimed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of eLIFT for advanced liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB).
Methods: A total of 294 CHB patients with liver biopsy were enrolled. The diagnostic accuracy of eLIFT for advanced liver fibrosis was evaluated and compared to aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI), fibrosis-4 score (FIB-4), gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase-to-platelet ratio (GPR), and red cell distribution width-to-platelet ratio (RPR) by ROC curves.
Results: The area under ROC curves (AUROCs) of eLIFT in predicting advanced fibrosis were 0.687 (95%CI 0.621 to 0.753), 0.714 (95%CI 0.631 to 0.798), and 0.633 (95%CI 0.522 to 0.744) in the entire cohort of CHB patients, HBeAg positive CHB patients, and HBeAg negative CHB patients, respectively. The optimal cut-off values of eLIFT for predicting advanced fibrosis in these three groups were 9.5. The eLIFT, as an easy-to-use scoring system, was comparable with APRI, FIB-4, GPR, and RPR in identifying advanced fibrosis in both HBeAg positive CHB and HBeAg negative CHB patients.
Conclusions: eLIFT as a novel index can predict advanced liver fibrosis with a moderate sensitivity and accuracy in CHB patients. eLIFT, though having similar diagnostic values of advanced liver fibrosis compared to more complex existing tools such as APRI, FIB-4, GPR, and RPR in CHB patients, has the advantage of clarity of generation and ease of application and has the potential of being widely used by hepatologists.