Testosterone and Estradiol as Novel Prognostic Indicators for HBV-Related Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure

• Main Authors: Shuning Sun, Baoyan Xu, Wenting Tan, Xiaomei Xiang, Yi Zhou, Yunjie Dan, Yanzhi Guo, Zhaoxia Tan, Guohong Deng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Medicine
• Subjects: ACLF (acute-on-chronic liver failure); hepatitis B; mortality; prognosis; testosterone (androgen); estradiol
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.729030/full

Background: HBV-related acute-on-chronic liver failure (HBV-ACLF) has a high short-term mortality and urgently needs an early warning system with simplicity and high accuracy. Previous studies show that sex hormones play potential roles in the progression of HBV-related liver diseases.Aims: To explore the effect of testosterone and estradiol on the occurrence and prognosis of HBV-ACLF.Methods: A prospective cohort of 300 chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients was enrolled among which 108 were diagnosed with HBV-ACLF at admission and 20 developed to HBV-ACLF during hospitalization. We compared the level of serum testosterone and estradiol of patients with varied ACLF background, disease severity and cirrhosis conditions and analyzed the predictive ability of short-term prognosis. A novel prognostic model involving testosterone was developed and further validated in the HBV-ACLF group.Results: The baseline estradiol level of HBV-ACLF group was significantly higher while testosterone was lower than that of non-ACLF group. The estradiol level increased while the testosterone level decreased as the number of organ failures increased. Testosterone had high accuracy in predicting the short-term mortality in HBV-ACLF (AUROC = 0.726) and estradiol did better in predicting the occurrence of ACLF during hospitalization (AUROC = 0.695). The novel prognostic model involving testosterone (TATIM model) was proved to have considerable prediction efficiency in HBV-ACLF cohort with or without cirrhosis.Conclusion: Testosterone could be utilized as short-term prognostic indicator for HBV-related ACLF and estradiol can help to predict its occurrence. TATIM model is a novel prognostic model for HBV-related ACLF with simplicity and good performance irrespectively of liver cirrhosis.Clinical Trial Registration Number: This study was based on a sub-cohort from the prospective multicenter cohort (NCT02457637).