Value of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in evaluating the severity and prognosis of hepatitis B virus-associated acute-on-chronic liver failure

Abstract

Objective To investigate the association of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) with the prognosis of hepatitis B virus-associated acute-on-chronic liver failure (HBV-ACLF) and its predictive value. Methods The patients with liver disease who were admitted to Department of Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, from January 2015 to January 2019 were enrolled, and according to the stage of disease progression, they were divided into HBV-ACLF group with 42 patients, liver cirrhosis group with 30 patients, and chronic hepatitis group with 25 patients. A total of 24 healthy individuals were enrolled as healthy control group. General clinical data were collected, including sex, age, prothrombin time (PT), albumin (Alb), total bilirubin (TBil), serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), HDL-C, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score. The HBV-ACLF group was further divided into improvement group with 17 patients and non-improvement group with 25 patients, and the patients were followed up for 3 months. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparison of non-normally distributed continuous variables between two groups; the Kruskal-Wallis H test was used for comparison between multiple groups, and the Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used for comparison within each group. A binary logistic regression analysis was used to investigate independent risk factors for prognosis, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the accuracy of the variables in prediction. Results There were significant differences in PT, Alb, BUN, TBil, TC, TG, HDL-C, LDL-C, and MELD scores between the liver cirrhosis group, the HBV-ACLF group, the chronic hepatitis group, and the healthy control group (χ2=75.134, 44.638, 10.253, 80.357, 55.067, 19.858, 68.174, 52.492, and 64.359, all P Conclusion HDL-C is an independent risk factor for the prognosis of patients with HBV-ACLF and has a good value in predicting the prognosis of HBV-ACLF.