A challenge of serological diagnosis in liver fibrosis

Liver fibrosis is an inevitable process of chronic liver diseases with different causes which may develop to liver cirrhosis.Its clinical manifestations are atypical and can induce liver cancer, which seriously threatens the health of patients.Therefore it is of great significance for patients to assess liver fibrosis accurately and timely.Owing to its advantage of noninvasive, convenient operation and good repeatability, serological indexes have been a research focus in the noninvasive diagnosis of liver fibrosis.This paper briefly introduces the application of conventional serological indexes and reviews the clinical application value, advantages and disadvantages of the index transformation growth factorβ1, Wisteria floribunda agglutinin-positive human Mac-2-binding protein and YKL-40.In this paper, we advice the possibility that serum insulin-like growth factor binding protein-related protein 1 measurement can be used as a laboratory diagnostic index of progressive liver fibrosis and liver cirrhosis, according to our longtime researches. Key words: Liver fibrosis; Serological indexes; Insulin-like growth factor binding protein-related protein 1; Transformation growth factorβ1; Diagnosis