Angiopoietin-2/angiopoietin-1 as non-invasive biomarker of cirrhosis in chronic hepatitis C

AIM: To evaluate the efficacy of peripheral blood concentrations of angiopoietins (Ang) as cirrhosis biomarkers of chronic hepatitis C (CHC). METHODS: test. Subsequently, the association of peripheral concentrations of angiopoietins with the stage of fibrosis was analyzed using Spearman correlation test. Finally, the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of circulating angiopoietins for cirrhosis diagnosis were determined by the study of the respective area under the curve of receiver operator characteristics (AUC-ROC). RESULTS: < 0.0001). Interestingly, the individual performance of each angiopoietin for the diagnosis of cirrhosis reached notable AUC-ROC values (above 0.7, both), but the Ang2/Ang1 ratio was much better (AUC-ROC = 0.810) and displayed outstanding values of sensitivity (71%), specificity (84%) and accuracy (82.1%) at the optimal cut-off (10.33). Furthermore, Ang2/Ang1 ratio improved the performance of many other previously described biomarkers or scores of liver cirrhosis in CHC. CONCLUSION: Ang2/Ang1 ratio might constitute a useful tool for monitoring the progression of chronic liver disease towards cirrhosis and play an important role as therapeutic target.