Enhanced liver fibrosis (ELF) score: Analytical performance and distribution range in a large cohort of blood donors.

Background: The Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) is a serological score that includes hyaluronic acid (HA), tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinases-1(TIMP-1), and aminoterminal propeptide of type III procollagen (PIIINP) and shows good performance for detecting liver fibrosis. There are few studies evaluating ELF's intra and inter-assay variation and stability of the samples. The influence of host variables, such as age, gender and body mass index (BMI) is also not well known.

Characterization of cumulative joint damage patterns in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a clinical, serological, and gene polymorphism perspective.

Objective: To characterize cumulative joint damage (CJD) patterns in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and determine their associations with demographic/clinical features and HLA-DRB1 gene polymorphism.

Methods: Hand and foot radiographs were obtained from 404 patients with RA. CJD patterns were determined by 3 derivations from Sharp/van der Heijde scores, obtained by the mathematical division of scores for hands/feet (Sharp-h/f score), fingers/wrists (Sharp-f/w score), and erosion/space narrowing (Sharp-e/sn score), respectively.