LAUSR

Recently, Lemoine and colleagues1 presented a novel marker of liver fibrosis, the gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase to platelet ratio (GPR), as a more accurate non-invasive marker than either the aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio index (APRI) or the fibrosis index based on four factors (FIB-4) for diagnosing liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in West Africa, and a simple and inexpensive alternative to transient elastography and liver biopsy. Boyd and colleagues2 demonstrated good results for GPR in the diagnosis of liver fibrosis in patients with HBV/HIV co-infection in France. However, Stockdale and colleagues3 reported that in patients with HBV / human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) co-infection in West Africa, GPR showed poor correlation with transient elastography. Lemoine and colleagues4 subsequently responded that the diagnostic accuracy of GPR differed when using liver biopsy or transient elastography as the reference. These inconsistent opinions indicated that the value of GPR for diagnosing liver fibrosis was still uncertain and needed further validation, not to mention its value for dynamic assessment of treatment response in patients with chronic HBV infection. To further evaluate the accuracy of GPR for diagnosing liver fibrosis, we undertook a retrospective study in China of 1168 patients, with …