Abstract
This study aimed to test the diagnostic performance of a fully quantitative fibrosis assessment tool for liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). A total of 117 patients with liver fibrosis were included in this study, including 50 patients with CHB, 49 patients with PBC and 18 patients with NASH. All patients underwent liver biopsy (LB). Fibrosis stages were assessed by two experienced pathologists. Histopathological images of LB slices were processed by second harmonic generation (SHG)/two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) microscopy without staining, a system called qFibrosis (quantitative fibrosis) system. Altogether 101 quantitative features of the SHG/TPEF images were acquired. The parameters of aggregated collagen in portal, septal and fibrillar areas increased significantly with stages of liver fibrosis in PBC and CHB (P<0.05), but the same was not found for parameters of distributed collagen (P>0.05). There was a significant correlation between parameters of aggregated collagen in portal, septal and fibrillar areas and stages of liver fibrosis from CHB and PBC (P<0.05), but no correlation was found between the distributed collagen parameters and the stages of liver fibrosis from those patients (P>0.05). There was no significant correlation between NASH parameters and stages of fibrosis (P>0.05). For CHB and PBC patients, the highest correlation was between septal parameters and fibrosis stages, the second highest was between portal parameters and fibrosis stages and the lowest correlation was between fibrillar parameters and fibrosis stages. The correlation between the septal parameters of the PBC and stages is significantly higher than the parameters of the other two areas (P<0.05). The qFibrosis candidate parameters based on CHB were also applicable for quantitative analysis of liver fibrosis in PBC patients. Different parameters should be selected for liver fibrosis assessment in different stages of PBC compared with CHB.
Liver fibrosis; Quantitative assessment; Etiology
Retraction for: Braz J Med Biol Res | doi: 10.1590/1414-431x20175234 | PMID: 28538834
The authors would like to retract the article ‘‘ Characteristics of liver fibrosis with different etiologies using a fully quantitative fibrosis assessment tool’ that was published in volume 50 no. 6 (2017) (Epub May 18, 2017) in the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research ohttp://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1414-431x201752344 PMID: 28538834.
The Corresponding author Hong You states that ‘‘ I am the corresponding author of this article, but I have not reviewed any data or the manuscript; therefore I do not agree with the submission. Although the data is not false, it is inappropriate behavior. Therefore, after discussing with the other authors, we have decided to retract this article.’’
The email used by Hong You for this statement is different from the email used by the authors during the submission, evaluation, correspondence, and publishing processes with the Brazilian Journal. We regret the unprofessional behavior of the authors involved.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
2017
History
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Received
7 Dec 2016 -
Accepted
3 May 2017
