Role of serum Nogo-B as a biomarker for diagnosis of chronic liver diseases and its severity

Abstract Background Nogo-B is one of the members of the reticulon family. Nogo-B influences the proliferation of the hepatic stellate cells inducing liver fibrotic changes. We aimed at measuring the serum levels of Nogo-B in patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) with different etiologies. Ninety subjects were included, 18 of them were normal healthy individuals and 72 had liver disease (fibrosis/cirrhosis) with different etiologies: post-hepatitis C infection, post-hepatitis B infection, NASH, and autoimmune hepatitis. Serum Nogo-B was assessed using ELISA. Patients were subdivided according to the Child-Pugh score into 3 groups: group 1—Child A (24 patients); group 2—Child B (24 patients); and group 3—Child C (24 patients). Results Serum Nogo-B levels were found to be significantly higher in patients (1477.92 ± 1113.50) when compared with healthy control (301.28 ± 180.87) (p < 0.001). There was a statistically significant difference in serum Nogo-B level between the three sub-groups of patients (p < 0.001). A positive correlation was found between serum Nogo-B and MELD score (r = 0.46, p-value < 0.001). However, there was no correlation found between Nogo-B and FIB-4 index or APRI score. There was a significant positive correlation between serum Nogo-B level and coagulation profile and serum bilirubin. An inverse correlation was found between serum Nogo-B with serum albumin. A ROC curve was done to examine the validity of Nogo-B in the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis, and the area under the curve was found to be 0.979, a cutoff value of 600 with a sensitivity of 97.2% and a specificity of 94.4% (p-value < 0.001). Conclusion Nogo-B had a high value in the identification of patients with any severity of CLD. There is a highly significant correlation between Nogo-B and the synthetic function of the liver; it could be used as a measure of hepatic functional reserve.