Abstract:

Objective　To investigate the significance of serum osteopontin（OPN） level in the diagnosis of liver fibrosis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease（NAFLD）. Methods　A total of 86 NAFLD patients and 60 healthy controls（healthy control group） were enrolled. Liver biopsy was carried out in NAFLD patients to evaluate liver fibrosis stages. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay（ELISA） was used to detect serum levels of OPN in NAFLD patients and healthy controls， and the correlations of OPN level with aspartate aminotransferase（AST）， alanine aminotransferase（ALT）， total cholesterol（TC）， high-density lipoprotein cholesterol（HDL-C）， low-density lipoprotein cholesterol（LDL-C）， triglyceride（TG） and high-sensitivity C reaction protein（hs-CRP） were analyzed. Results　Compared with healthy controls， body mass index（BMI）， systolic pressure， diastolic pressure， AST， ALT， homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance（HOMA-IR）， TC， LDL-C and TG in NAFLD patients significantly increased， and the proportion of diabetes mellitus and metabolism syndrome was higher（P＜0.01）. Serum OPN level was significantly higher in NAFLD patients and showed positive correlation with AST， ALT， hs-CRP and liver fibrosis stages（r=0.224， 0.265， 0.192 and 0.219， P＜0.001， ＜0.001， =0.003 and ＜0.001， respectively）. There were negative correlations with sex and HDL-C（r=-0.213 and -0.191， P＜0.01 and =0.041， respectively）. In addition， for liver fibrosis stage ≥3 in NAFLD patients， when the cut-off value was 32 μg/L， the area under receiver operating characteristic（ROC） curve was 0.897， and the sensitivity and specificity were 0.821 and 0.855. Conclusions　As a pro-fibrotic factor， OPN can not only predict NAFLD fibrosis stages， but also plays a role in pathogenesis of NAFLD.

Key words: Osteopontin, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Liver fibrosis