Aim: The early prognosis evaluation of acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is important to decrease its mortality. We aimed to develop a new score to accurately predict the outcome of patients with ACLF.
Methods: A derivation set of 408 patients with hepatitis B virus-related ACLF (HBV-ACLF) based on the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver criteria is used to develop a prognostic score that was validated in 209 patients with HBV-ACLF and 195 patients with non-HBV-ACLF.
Results: Seven factors were significantly related to the 28-day mortality and constituted a new score (CHINAT-CD4 = 0.320 × ln (creatinine) + 0.668 × hepatic encephalopathy score + 0.745 × ln (international normalized ratio) + 0.476 × ln (neutrophil) + 0.251 × ln (aspartate aminotransferase) + 0.411 × ln (total bilirubin) - 0.605 × ln (CD4+ T cells count)). The C-indices of the new score for the 28-/90-day mortality (0.810/0.806) outperformed those of the other seven scores (p ≤ 0.05). The results were confirmed in a validation set (0.798/793 for HBV-ACLF; 0.790/0.788 for non-HBV-ACLF). The novel score based on CD4⁺ T cell count showed high predictive performance for the 28-/90-day mortality of ACLF.
Conclusion: The novel score based on CD4⁺ T cell count can accurately predict the 28-/90-day mortality for patients with ACLF.
Keywords: liver failure, chronic liver disease, prognostic score, risk stratification, inflammatory markers