[Clinical significance of circulating hypoxia inducible factor-1α and hemeoxygenase-1 in patients with liver cirrhosis].

OBJECTIVE

To explore the levels of circulating hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) and hemeoxygenase-1 (HO-1) in liver cirrhosis and to explore their diagnostic values as noninvasive methods.

METHODS

The levels of circulating HIF-1α and HO-1 were quantitatively detected in 34 patients with liver cirrhosis and 10 healthy controls by ELISA from May 2012 to May 2013. The diagnostic values were analyzed by ROC curve and their correlation with clinicopathological characters were also compared.

RESULTS

The serum levels of HIF-1α and HO-1 were significantly higher than those in healthy controls ((10.99 ± 0.24) vs (5.79 ± 0.84) µg/L, (63.04 ± 1.87) vs (16.35 ± 2.07) µg/L, both P < 0.01). No significant difference existed among Child-Pugh classification. The expressions of HIF-1α and HO-1 had a linear correlation between each other, and closely related with rebleeding and portal thrombosis during a one-year follow-up (all P < 0.05). The area under ROC curve of HIF-1α and HO-1 was 0.894 and 0.994 respectively. With 9.45 µg/L as a critical point for HIF-1α, the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis might be predicted with a positive predictive value of 91.2%. And HO-1 >31.86 µg/L predicted the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis with a sensitivity of 97.1% and a specificity of 100%.

CONCLUSIONS

The serum levels of HIF-1α and HO-1 may serve as useful molecular markers for a noninvasive diagnosis of liver cirrhosis.