P1: New non‐invasive model, based on serum bile acid levels and patient's parameters for liver fibrosis assessment in patients with chronic hepatitis C

BACKGROUND: Serum bile acids (SBAs) are commonly elevated in cholestatic liver diseases, but it is unclear if SBA levels are also elevated in non-cholestatic chronic liver diseases and whether levels correlate with disease severity. METHODS: We analyzed SBA levels of 135 consecutive patients with chronic hepatitis C infection and correlated these levels with the degree of liver fibrosis determined by liver biopsy. In addition, we assessed the accuracy of SBA levels as predictor of liver fibrosis by comparison to patients’ FibroTest scores. RESULTS: Two-thirds (90/135 patients, 67%) of patients had non-severe liver fibrosis (Metavir F0-F2) and the others (45/135, 33%) had severe fibrosis or cirrhosis (Metavir F3-F4). Over 80% of patients had genotype 1 HCV. The SBA levels were significantly higher in patients with severe fibrosis compared to non-severe fibrosis (11.46 10.01 versus 6.37 4.69, p < 0.0001). Furthermore, a ROC curve based on a model that included serum bile acids, age, BMI, serum AST, glucose and cholesterol levels suggested that this combination reliably predicts the degree of liver fibrosis, and is not inferior to the FibroTest score (p = 0.87). We found no significant correlation (p = 0.57) between HCV viral load and the SBA levels among the 30 patients in which SBA levels were obtained at the same time with the viral load. CONCLUSIONS: Measurement of SBA levels may have a clinical role as a non-invasive tool to assess the severity of HCV-induced liver disease. Combined with other laboratory parameters, SBA levels predicts fibrosis severity with high degree of accuracy. P2 An efficient and low cost method for detection, quantification and genotyping of hepatitis C virus K Davalieva, S Kiprijanovska and D Plaseska-Karanfilska Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia