Combining liver stiffness with hyaluronic acid provides superior prognostic performance in chronic hepatitis C.

Background: Non-invasive methods are the first choice for liver fibrosis evaluation in chronic liver diseases, but few studies investigate the ability of combined methods to predict outcomes.

Methods: 591 chronic hepatitis C patients with baseline liver stiffness (LSM) by FibroScan and hyaluronic acid measurements were identified retrospectively. The patients were grouped by baseline LSM: < 10kPa, 10-16.

IP-10 can be measured in dried plasma spots in patients with chronic hepatitis C infection.

The chemokine IP-10 (CXCL10) is a candidate marker for hepatitis C virus (HCV) fibrosis monitoring. The aim of this proof-of-concept study is to assess if IP-10 measurements from dried plasma spots (DPS) are accurate in HCV-infected patients with either minimal or significant fibrosis. We measured IP-10 levels in plasma and DPS of 21 HCV-infected patients with cirrhosis and 19 patients with no/little fibrosis (determined with FibroScan).

Lower liver stiffness in patients with sustained virological response 4 years after treatment for chronic hepatitis C.

Objective: Transient elastography (TE) is a noninvasive and well validated method for measurement of liver stiffness. The aim of this study was to use TE to evaluate whether patients with sustained virological response (SVR) have lower liver stiffness than patients with non-SVR after treatment for chronic hepatitis C (CHC).

Methods: Patients with CHC, who had undergone liver biopsy before treatment with pegylated interferon and ribavirin, were included from four clinical centres in Denmark.