Background/Aims Hepatitis E virus (HEV)-triggered acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) has unacceptably high short-term mortality. However, it is unclear whether the existing predictive scoring models are applicable to evaluate the prognosis of HEV-triggered ACLF. Methods We screened datasets of patients with HEV-triggered ACLF from a regional tertiary hospital for infectious diseases in Shanghai, China, between January 2011 and January 2021. Clinical and laboratory parameters were recorded and compared to determine a variety of short-term mortality risk factors, which were used to develop and validate a new prognostic scoring model. Results Out of 4952 HEV-infected patients, 817 patients with underlying chronic liver disease were enrolled in this study. Among these, 371 patients with HEV-triggered ACLF were identified and allocated to the training set (n = 254) and test set (n = 117). The analysis revealed that hepatic encephalopathy (HE), ascites, triacylglycerol and apolipoprotein A (apoA) were associated with 90-day mortality (P < 0.05). Based on these significant indicators, we designed and calculated a new prognostic score = 0.632 × (ascites: no, 1 point; mild to moderate, 2 points; severe, 3 points) + 0.865 × (HE: no, 1 point; grade 1–2, 2 points; grade 3–4, 3 points) − 0.413 × triacylglycerol (mmol/L) − 2.171 × apoA (g/L). Compared to four well-known prognostic models (MELD score, CTP score, CLIF-C OFs and CLIF-C ACLFs), the new scoring model is more accurate, with the highest auROCs of 0.878 and 0.896, respectively, to predict 28- and 90-day transplantation-free survival from HEV-triggered ACLF. When our model was compared to COSSH ACLF IIs, there was no significant difference. The test data also demonstrated good concordance. Conclusions This study is one of the first to address the correlation between hepatitis E and serum lipids and provides a new simple and efficient prognostic scoring model for HEV-triggered ACLF.

Introduction Patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) have a dynamic disease process and risk of end-stage liver disease. It is critical to unambiguously differentiate the stages of the disease and focus on therapy prior to onset of an irreversible clinical endpoint. Methods We retrospectively analyzed a wide range of CHB patients at different stages. The predictive power of serum complement component 3 (C3) levels for the development of acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) in patients with decompensated cirrhosis was established and validated. Results The decrease in serum C3 levels paralleled the severity of diseases related to hepatitis B virus. Patients with decompensated cirrhosis who developed ACLF had significantly lower serum C3 levels than others on admission (0.50 vs. 0.80 g/L, P < 0.001). Data analysis also revealed that low serum C3 was a significant risk factor for developing ACLF (hazard ratio = 0.32, P < 0.01). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (auROC) for serum C3 levels that predicted the development of ACLF in patients with decompensated cirrhosis was 0.90, which had sensitivity and specificity of 88.2% and 88.7%, respectively. A similar result was observed in the validation set (auROC = 0.86 for predicting development of ACLF in patients with decompensated cirrhosis). Conclusions Serum C3 levels are valuable in assessing the severity of CHB-related stages. Low C3 levels signifies the development of ACLF in patients with decompensated cirrhosis. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12325-022-02416-7.