PURPOSE Childhood obesity is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and it has become one of the most common causes of childhood chronic liver diseases which significant as a cause of liver related mortality and morbidity in children in the United States. The development of simpler and easier clinical indices for medical practice is needed to identify advanced hepatic fibrosi...

AIM To evaluate the performance of aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio (APRI) score against FibroScan in predicting the presence of fibrosis. METHODS Data of patients who concurrently had APRI score, FibroScan and liver biopsy to assess their hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) over 6 years were retrospectively reviewed and details of their disease characteristics and...

Preoperative aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) has been identified as a biochemical marker for histological fibrogenesis and fibrosis in cirrhosis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Whether preoperative APRI can predict postoperative short-term outcomes has not been studied. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of preoperative APRI to pr...

The gene (aprI) encoding alkaline serine protease (AprI; subtilase) from Alteromonas sp. strain O-7 was cloned and sequenced. The nucleotide sequence of aprI has been identified. The deduced amino acid sequence indicated that aprI codes for a precursor of 715 amino acids and the precursor is composed of four regions including a signal peptide, an N-terminal pro-region, a mature protease region ...

Aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio index (APRI) has originally been considered as a noninvasive marker for detecting hepatic fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B and C. APRI has been used for predicting liver-related mortality in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection or alcoholic liver disease. However, whether APRI could be useful for predicting mortality in chro...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Following sustained virological response (SVR) for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) infection, patients with advanced fibrosis require regular monitoring for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio index (APRI) is a simple noninvasive surrogate marker known to reflect fibrosis. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed 598 patients who achieved SVR ...

BACKGROUND The aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI), a tool with limited expense and widespread availability, is a promising noninvasive alternative to liver biopsy for detecting hepatic fibrosis. The objective of this study was to systematically review the performance of the APRI in predicting significant fibrosis and cirrhosis in hepatitis B-related fibrosis. METHODS Ar...

BACKGROUND Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) can lead to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The NASH fibrosis score (NFS) has proven to be a reliable, non-invasive marker for prediction of advanced fibrosis. Aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) is a simpler calculation than NFS, but has never been studied in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). ...

Obesity in children is becoming a global epidemic. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a highly prevalent and potentially serious complication of childhood obesity. Adiponectin level was decreased on obese children. Adiponectin is a protective factor against non-alcoholic fatty liver disease on obesity. The early identification of fibrosis is important in children with NAFLD in order to...

INTRODUCTION Although it is standard procedure in the evaluation of liver diseases, biopsy is an invasive method subject to sampling error and intra or inter-observer variability. Thus, surrogate markers of liver fibrosis have been proposed, with variable availability and accuracy. AIM Validate and compare the performance of APRI and FIB-4 as predictors of liver fibrosis in HCV patients. MA...