Zhu YJ, Li J, Liu YG, Jiang Y, Cheng XJ, Han X, Wang CY, Li J. Role of biochemical markers and autoantibodies in diagnosis of early-stage primary biliary cholangitis. World J Gastroenterol 2023; 29(34): 5075-5081 [PMID: 37753365 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i34.5075]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Chun-Yan Wang, Doctor, Chief Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, Clinical School of the Second People's Hospital, No. 7 Sudi South Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300110, China. wangchunyan123@tmu.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Yu-Jin Zhu, Jing Li, Graduate School, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300041, China
Yong-Gang Liu, Department of Pathology, Clinical School of the Second People's Hospital, Tianjin 300110, China
Yong Jiang, Department of Gastroenterology, The Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300211, China
Xiao-Jing Cheng, Xu Han, Chun-Yan Wang, Jia Li, Department of Gastroenterology, Clinical School of the Second People's Hospital, Tianjin 300110, China
Author contributions: Zhu YJ wrote the manuscript; Zhu YJ, Cheng XJ, and Han X contributed to data collation; Zhu YJ and Li J contributed to statistical analysis; Liu YG contributed to liver pathology reading; Jiang Y, Wang CY, and Li J contributed to manuscript revision; Wang CY and Li J contributed to research supervision; Wang CY contributed to project design.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol conforms to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the local Ethics Committee (Clinical School of the Second People's Hospital of Tianjin).
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: The data underlying this article can be available in this article and in its online supplementary material or from the first author.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Chun-Yan Wang, Doctor, Chief Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, Clinical School of the Second People's Hospital, No. 7 Sudi South Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300110, China. wangchunyan123@tmu.edu.cn
Received: June 4, 2023 Peer-review started: June 4, 2023 First decision: June 21, 2023 Revised: July 15, 2023 Accepted: August 25, 2023 Article in press: August 25, 2023 Published online: September 14, 2023 Processing time: 96 Days and 4.8 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
The long course and insidious symptoms of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) make it difficult to diagnose in the early stage.
Research motivation
To analyze clinical features and autoantibodies in patients with early-stage PBC.
Research objectives
To improve the diagnosis rates of early-stage PBC.
Research methods
We included 82 patients with PBC diagnosed by liver pathology with clear pathologic stage and divided them into three groups to compare their laboratory parameters and autoantibody positivity.
Research results
In early-stage PBC patients, alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase levels were normal or mildly elevated, gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) levels were not elevated in parallel, GGT levels were more robustly elevated, and ALP levels were normal in some patients. When anti-mitochondria antibody (AMA) and AMA-M2 were negative, anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) (especially ANA centromere) positivity suggests the possibility of early-stage PBC.
Research conclusions
We found that GGT is elevated significantly and earlier in the early-stage PBC group. ANA and associated-ANA subtypes can be used as second-line markers for the diagnosis of early-stage PBC (particularly when specific autoantibodies are negative).
Research perspectives
We hope that this study will increase the rates of diagnosis of early-stage PBC by clinicians.
