Assessment of new hyaluronic acid assays and their impact on FibroMeter scores

BackgroundWe compared three hyaluronic acid (HA) assays and analyzed the impact of their variations on FibroMeter scores.MethodsIn a test group of 165 patients, HA levels were assessed with the commonly used ELISA assay from Corgenix, a new ELISA assay from Teco and an immunoturbidimetry assay from Wako, this latter tested across three different instruments. Five different FibroMeter scores were calculated.ResultsCorrelation across the three assays (r_s between 0.969 and 0.995) was very good. Means of differences (d) were lower when the immunoturbidimetry assay was compared on different instruments: d between ?3.4 and 2.0 μg/L. However, a higher value for HA measurement was observed with Corgenix assay, compared to the other two assays (Teco and Wako): d between 27.1 and 36.4 μg/L. The assessment also demonstrated that HA variations had very little impact on FibroMeter scores: 0.0117 for virus and 0.0416 for alcoholic fibrosis scores, and between 0.58 and 1.71 for the area of fibrosis (expressed in percentage).ConclusionsThe two new assays found lower values of HA, as compared to the Corgenix assay. However, these differences had very little impact on FibroMeter scores and had no impact on clinical evaluation of liver fibrosis.