Abstract: Objective The aim of this study was to predict liver fibrosis by liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio (APRI) in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC). Methods A total of 133 patients with CHC and 133 volunteers were enrolled in this study in our hospital between May 2016 and May 2020, and all of them underwent LSM by FibroScan check-up and got APRI in clinic assessment. All CHC patients received liver biopsies for liver fibrosis evaluation. Results The LSM and APRI in patients with CHC were (10.3±4.2) and (0.8±0.3), both significantly higher than [(4.3±2.0) and (0.3±0.1), respectively, P＜0.05] in healthy persons; the LSM and APRI in 52 patients with liver fibrosis stage 1 (S₁) were (6.5±2.4) and (0.6±0.2), in 37 with S₂ were (10.3±2.9) and (0.9±0.3), in 28 with S₃ were (14.5±4.1) and (1.2±0.5), in 16 with S₄ were (18.4±5.7) and (1.8±0.6), significantly different among them (P＜0.05); the ROC analysis showed that the AUC of LSM was 0.891 in predicting significant liver fibrosis defined as equal to or greater than S2, with the standard error (SE) of 0.033 (P=0.000, 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.826-0.956), the primal cut-off-value of 11.200, the sensitivity (Se) of 0.625 and the specificity (Sp) of 0.925, while the AUC of APRI was 0.776, with the SE of 0.050 (P=0.000, 95% CI of 0.678-0.875, the cut-off-value of 0.795, the Se of 0.643 and Sp of 0.887; both the LSM and APRI were positively correlated to liver fibrosis in patients with CHC(P＜0.05). Conclusion Both LSM and APRI could be applied to the diagnosis and staging assessment of liver fibrosis in patients with CHC, which warrants further multi-central clinical investigation.

Key words: Hepatitis C, Liver fibrosis, Liver stiffness measurement, Aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio, Diagnosis