[Clinical evaluation of serum collagen type IV in diagnosing liver fibrosis]

Serum collagen type IV (CIV) levels determined by one step sandwich EIA kit were compared with the serum procollagen type III (PCIII) and hyaluronic acid (HA) in 114 patients with various liver diseases, 30 patients without liver diseases (NL) and 30 controls.

serum CIV was significantly increased in chronic active hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and primary hepatic carcinoma. So were PCIII and HA. Serum CIV PCIII and HA were found to be closely related to the degree of fibrosis in 69 patients' liver biopsy studies, but no correlation could be found between these 3 markers. The sensitivity of CIV, PCIII, HA in detecting liver fibrosis were 73.9%, 67.4%, 67.4% with specificity of 95.7%, 91.3%, 100.0% respectively. The early diagnostic value of CIV is better than PCIII and HA; their combination could further raise the diagnostic sensitivity to more than 90.0%.