Role of a cirrhosis risk score for the early prediction of fibrosis progression in hepatitis C patients with minimal liver disease

Background & Aims Fibrosis progression in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is highly variable. A Cirrhosis Risk Score (CRS) based on seven genetic variants has been recently developed for identifying patients at risk for cirrhosis. The objective of this study was to assess the role of the CRS for the early prediction of fibrosis progression in CHC patients with mild liver fibrosis. In addition, we evaluated the potential benefit, for prediction accuracy, of a recently described non-invasive fibrosis staging assay, the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) test. Methods Two separate cohorts of HCV patients (Brussels, Belgium/Hannover, Germany) were retrospectively analyzed. Only patients with a fibrosis Ishak or METAVIR score of F0–F1 at baseline were included. Patients were classified as progressors if they showed an increase ⩾2 fibrosis stages at the second histological evaluation after a follow-up ⩾5 years. The CRS was calculated locally. Genotyping was performed by PCR and oligonucleotide ligation with the resulting signal detected with a Luminex® 200TM and computer analysis. Results In Brussels, 12/25 patients progressed (48%); similarly in Hannover, 16/31 (52%) patients progressed. In both sample sets, the CRS was significantly associated with fibrosis progression ( p = 0.050 in Brussels; p = 0.018 in Hannover). The ELF test was only a significant predictor in Hannover ( p = 0.015). In multivariate analysis the CRS remained the only variable associated with fibrosis progression (odds-ratio = 2.23, 95%CI 1.21–4.11 p = 0.01). Conclusions Although conducted on a limited number of patients, this study in two independent centres confirms that the CRS predicts fibrosis progression in initially mild CHC.