Performance of cytokeratin-18 apoptotic fragment for the identification of hepatic fibrosis and inflammation in patients with chronic viral hepatitis: a meta-analysis

摘要

INTRODUCTION: The search for non-invasive tools aiming to assess liver fibrosis and inflammation, and able to replace liver biopsy, remains one of the most important unmet need in clinical practice. Although cytokeratin 18-Asp396 (CK18-Asp396) apoptotic fragment has been considered an important marker of hepatitis progression, until now, conflicting results have been reported. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of CK18-Asp396 for the detection of fibrosis and inflammation in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) and chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection.