The performance of soluble CD163 as a non-invasive biomarker of liver damage in chronically HCV and HCV/HIV infected subjects

PLoS One. 2022 Jul 7;17(7):e0270911. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270911. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Macrophage activation plays a key role in liver disease progression. Soluble CD163 (sCD163) is a specific macrophage activation biomarker useful for clinical estimating damage severity and predicting outcome in different liver conditions. sCD163 performance as a non-invasive marker of liver damage was evaluated in plasma samples at time of biopsy in 120 patients with different hepatic conditions (56 HCV, 20 HCV/HIV, 10 HBV and 34 MAFLD). sCD163 values were compared with those of healthy donors and analyzed related to histological damage. sCD163 together with other clinical parameters were used to create a logistical regression model to predict significant fibrosis. Only patients with viral hepatitis showed higher sCD163 values compared to the control group (HCV p<0.0001; HCV/HIV p<0.0001; HBV p = 0.0003), but no significant differences regarding fibrosis stages were observed. The proposed model predicts fibrosis severity using the logarithm sCD163 concentration, platelet count and age, it demonstrated to be a good marker for the HCV monoinfected group (AUROC 0.834) and an excellent one for the HCV/HIV co-infected group (AUROC 0.997). Moreover, the model displayed a diagnostic performance similar to FIB-4 in HCV cases and FIB-4 and APRI in HCV/HIV coinfected cases, and it even managed to correctly classify some cases that had been misclassified. The proposed model is able to determine, in a non-invasive way, the liver fibrosis stage of HCV and HCV/HIV patients, so after validation, it could be used in a complementary way in the clinical practice whenever APRI and FIB-4 failed to determine damage severity in HCV and HCV/HIV cases.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Antigens, CD
  • Antigens, Differentiation, Myelomonocytic
  • Biomarkers
  • HIV Infections* / complications
  • Hepatitis C*
  • Humans
  • Liver Cirrhosis / diagnosis
  • Liver Cirrhosis / pathology
  • Receptors, Cell Surface

Substances

  • Antigens, CD
  • Antigens, Differentiation, Myelomonocytic
  • Biomarkers
  • CD163 antigen
  • Receptors, Cell Surface

Grants and funding

This work was funded by grants from the National Agency for Scientific and Technology Promotion (ANPCyT) (P.V PICT 2014 N°1553, M.V.P PICT 2017 N°713) and National Research Council (CONICET, M.V.P PIP 2014). P.V., E.D.M., P.C. M.V.P. are members of the CONICET-Research Career Program. VC. is a fellow from ANPCyT. Funder's had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors disclose no financial conflicts of interest.