Results showed that the ATX levels of patients with PBC were significantly higher than those of controls (median, 0.97 mg/L vs. 0.76 mg/L, respectively; P less than .0001).
Autotaxin results were validated by biopsy-proven histologic assessment: Patients with PBC that was classified as Nakanuma’s stage I, II, III, and IV had median ATX concentrations of 0.70, 0.80, 0.87, 1.03, and 1.70 mg/L, respectively, which demonstrated significant increases in concentration of ATX with disease stage (r = 0.53; P less than .0001). The researchers confirmed this finding using Scheuer’s classification of the disease (r = 0.43; P less than .0001).
The researchers noted that their findings were also “well correlated with other established noninvasive fibrosis markers, indicating ATX to be a reliable clinical surrogate marker to predict disease progression in patients with PBC.”
For example, autotaxin levels correlated with W. floribunda agglutinin–positive Mac-2 binding protein (r = 0.51; P less than .0001) and the fibrosis index based on four factors index (r = 0.51; P less than .0001).