Complement C3 Facilitates Stratification of Stages of Chronic Hepatitis B and Signifies Development of Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure in Acute Decompensated Cirrhosis.

Introduction: Patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) have a dynamic disease process and risk of end-stage liver disease. It is critical to unambiguously differentiate the stages of the disease and focus on therapy prior to onset of an irreversible clinical endpoint.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed a wide range of CHB patients at different stages. The predictive power of serum complement component 3 (C3) levels for the development of acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) in patients with decompensated cirrhosis was established and validated.

Results: The decrease in serum C3 levels paralleled the severity of diseases related to hepatitis B virus. Patients with decompensated cirrhosis who developed ACLF had significantly lower serum C3 levels than others on admission (0.50 vs. 0.80 g/L, P < 0.001). Data analysis also revealed that low serum C3 was a significant risk factor for developing ACLF (hazard ratio = 0.32, P < 0.01). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (auROC) for serum C3 levels that predicted the development of ACLF in patients with decompensated cirrhosis was 0.90, which had sensitivity and specificity of 88.2% and 88.7%, respectively. A similar result was observed in the validation set (auROC = 0.86 for predicting development of ACLF in patients with decompensated cirrhosis).

Conclusions: Serum C3 levels are valuable in assessing the severity of CHB-related stages. Low C3 levels signifies the development of ACLF in patients with decompensated cirrhosis.