Association of liver biomarkers and cytokeratin-18 in Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of gold standard liver biomarkers with serum cytokeratin 18 (CK18), serum Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and serum aspartate (AST). METHODS: This was cross sectional study. It was conducted at Mayo Hospital from January 2016 to December 2017. It comprised of 148 non-alcoholic fatty liver disease subjects of age 40-60 years. After written informed consent, study anthropometric measurements (age, height, waist circumference and hip circumference) were taken and serum AST, ALT and CK-18 were estimated by sandwiched ELISA technique. Data was analyzed using SPSS 21.0. Descriptive were presented as mean and standard deviation. Association between CK18, serum AST and ALT were analyzed by regression analysis and are presented as beta coefficient. P-value ≤ 0.05 was taken as significant. RESULTS: Study comprised of 148 subjects with mean age 44.81±6.2. Of total population 29.1% were male and 70.9% were female. Significant positive association of CK18 was found with serum ALT (P-value 0.005*). However, no association was found between AST and serum CK18. (P-value 0.29). CONCLUSION: Significant positive association was found between Serum CK18 and serum ALT.