Platelet count as a screening tool for compensated cirrhosis in chronic viral hepatitis.

BACKGROUND

Simple tools for clinicians to identify cirrhosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis are medically necessary for treatment initiation, hepatocellular cancer screening and additional medical management.

AIM

To determine whether platelets or other laboratory markers can be used as a simple method to identify the development of cirrhosis.

METHODS

Clinical, biochemical and histologic laboratory data from treatment naive chronic viral hepatitis B (HBV), C (HCV), and D (HDV) patients at the NIH Clinical Center from 1985-2019 were collected and subjects were randomly divided into training and validation cohorts. Laboratory markers were tested for their ability to identify cirrhosis (Ishak ≥ 5) using receiver operating characteristic curves and an optimal cut-off was calculated within the training cohort. The final cut-off was tested within the validation cohort.

RESULTS

Overall, 1027 subjects (HCV = 701, HBV = 240 and HDV = 86), 66% male, with mean (standard deviation) age of 45 (11) years were evaluated. Within the training cohort ( = 715), platelets performed the best at identifying cirrhosis compared to other laboratory markers [Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristics curve (AUROC) = 0.86 (0.82-0.90)] and sensitivity 77%, specificity 83%, positive predictive value 44%, and negative predictive value 95%. All other tested markers had AUROCs ≤ 0.77. The optimal platelet cut-off for detecting cirrhosis in the training cohort was 143 × 10/L and it performed equally well in the validation cohort ( = 312) [AUROC = 0.85 (0.76-0.94)].

CONCLUSION

The use of platelet counts should be considered to identify cirrhosis and ensure optimal care and management of patients with chronic viral hepatitis.