A-127 Mean platelet volume/platelet count ratio is markedly increased in liver cirrhosis than hepatitis

Abstract Background Mean platelet volume (MPV) is the commonly measured platelet index for platelet size and surrogate marker of platelet activation. Liver is an organ to produce thrombopoietin that regulates platelet production and maturation. In this study, we investigated the changes of mean platelet volume (MPV) to platelet count (PC) ratio in patients with chronic hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis C, non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis and alcoholic liver cirrhosis. Methods Patients group is comprised of 81 chronic hepatitis B, 23 chronic hepatitis C, 98 non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis, and 30 alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients. Diagnosis was identified through medical chart review. For the control group, 143 subjects for medical check-ups were enrolled from the same hospital, which were also used as control group in previous studies. MPV and PC were measured using an ADVIA 2120 (Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Tarrytown, NY, USA) within 2 hours of venous sampling. ANOVA analysis was used to examine the difference between variables. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was done to evaluate the diagnostic performance. The statistical analyses were performed with MedCalc v11.6 (MedCalc Software, Mariakerke, Belgium) and Excel 2007 (Microsoft corporation, Redmond, WA). P values<0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results MPV/PC is 0.03209 in control group, 0.05709 in chronic hepatitis B and chronic hepatitis C patients, 0.1037 in non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients and 0.1071 in alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients, respectively (Figure 1). MPV/PC showed the significant increase in liver cirrhosis patients comparing with chronic hepatitis patients and control group (P<0.001). Non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis and alcoholic liver cirrhosis presented no significant difference. Comparing control group and liver cirrhosis patient, ROC analysis showed 88.3% sensitivity and 94.4% specificity at criterion >0.044 (AUC=0.946, P<0.001) (Figure 2). Conclusion According to the results, MPV/PC was markedly increased in liver cirrhosis regardless of etiology of cirrhosis. Increasing MPV/PC means that platelet size was increased accompanying decreasing PC. Platelet size seems to increase for compensating decreasing PC in liver cirrhosis to maintain the total mass of platelets. As a diagnostic tool for liver cirrhosis, MPV/PC showed excellent sensitivity and specificity. In the future, the clinical utility of increasing MPV/PC needs to be further evaluated in liver cirrhosis regardless of its etiology.