Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. May 27, 2021; 13(5): 571-583
Published online May 27, 2021. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v13.i5.571
Combination of type IV collagen 7S, albumin concentrations, and platelet count predicts prognosis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Miwa Kawanaka, Ken Nishino, Katsunori Ishii, Tomohiro Tanikawa, Noriyo Urata, Mitsuhiko Suehiro, Takako Sasai, Ken Haruma, Hirofumi Kawamoto
Miwa Kawanaka, Ken Nishino, Katsunori Ishii, Tomohiro Tanikawa, Noriyo Urata, Mitsuhiko Suehiro, Takako Sasai, Ken Haruma, Hirofumi Kawamoto, Department of General Internal Medicine, Kawasaki Medical School, Okayama 700-8505, Japan
Author contributions: Kawanaka M contributed conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, resources, software, supervision, validation and visualization; Ishii K and Nishino K contributed funding acquisition; Tanikawa T and Urata N contributed investigation; Suehiro M contributed methodology; Sasai T, Haruma K, and Kawamoto H contributed project administration; Kawanaka M wrote original draft, reviewed and edited manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol complied with guidelines of the 1975 Helsinki Declaration and was approved by the Institutional Research Ethics Committee (approval No. 3027).
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from all the patients.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Miwa Kawanaka, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of General Internal Medicine, Kawasaki Medical School, 2-6-1, Nakasange, Kitaku, Okayama 700-8505, Japan. m.kawanaka@med.kawasaki-m.ac.jp
Received: December 31, 2020
Peer-review started: December 31, 2020
First decision: February 13, 2021
Revised: February 25, 2021
Accepted: April 22, 2021
Article in press: April 22, 2021
Published online: May 27, 2021
Processing time: 140 Days and 1.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: We investigated biomarkers associated with mortality in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients who underwent liver biopsy. Blood biomarkers associated with mortality were platelet count, albumin levels, and type IV collagen 7S levels. In particular, 5-year and 10-year survival rates were reduced for patients with all three factors: platelet counts below 15 × 104/μL, albumin levels below 3.5 g/dL, and type IV collagen 7S levels more 5 ng/dL. In summary, the combination of the three non-invasive biomarkers is a useful predictor of NAFLD prognosis and helps identify patients with NAFLD who are at high risk of death from all causes.