Liver fibrosis in chronic liver disease refers to the body’s repair response to sustained repeated necrosis or inflammation of liver cells, which results in fibrosis accompanied by relative or absolute lack of fiber degradation and deposition of extracellular matrix in the liver. Early and timely diagnosis and treatment of hepatic fibrosis are of great importance to patients with liver disease. A rational and complete diagnostic model of liver fibrosis should involve clinical pathology and histology, imaging, and serum biochemical markers. Liver biopsy has been regarded as the "gold standard" for the diagnosis of liver fibrosis and as a reference standard for other non-invasive diagnostic tests of liver fibrosis. Since it is invasive, liver biopsy is difficult to implement in clinical practice and a second liver biopsy is even more difficult. As for the non-invasive diagnosis of liver fibrosis, clinical symptoms and signs are not specific. The sensitivity and specificity of individual serum biochemical markers are still very weak, and imaging studies also lack specificity. The mathematical model “FibroTest” of serum biochemical markers has better diagnostic accuracy, but the calculation is complicated, making it difficult to achieve widespread use. There is insufficient evidence to suggest that the "gold standard" of liver biopsy can be replaced. Therefore, further research is needed to investigate how best to balance the benefits and harms of different tests, to identify the best combination, to simplify any calculation steps, to reduce costs, to avoid liver biopsy, and to find new, more specific and sensitive markers.
Objective To evaluate the quality of studies assessing the value of serum hyaluronic acid in the diagnosis of liver fibrosis, to analyze the sources of bias and variation, and to estimate the accuracy of serum hyaluronic acid in diagnosing early liver cirrhosis and liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis.Methods We searched MEDLINE (1966 to June 2006), EMbase (1974 to June 2006), CBMdisc (1978 to April 2005), CNKI (2005 to June 2006) and VIP (2005 to June 2006) for studies assessing the diagnostic value of serum hyaluronic acid for liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis. We checked the references in the reports of included studies. QUADAS items were used for quality assessment. Meta-disc software was used to analyze sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic test odds ratio for the pooled analysis and heterogeneity test. DPS2005 software was used to draw SROC curves for those without heterogeneity. Results In total 24 studies were included: 12 published in Chinese and 12 published in English. Results of the pooled analysis showed that, as for radioimmunoassay (RIA), the pooled LR+ of the studies involving the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis and the differentiation of absent/present liver fibrosis were 7.029 and 3.608; and the pooled LR- were 0.198 and 0.319, respectively. As for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), the pooled LR+ of the studies involving the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis, the differentiation of mild/severe and absent/present liver fibrosis were 6.093, 9.806 and 4.308; and the pooled LR- were 0.354, 0.347 and 0.563, respectively. Conclusion The biases identified from the 24 studies are mainly due to reference standard review bias. By both RIA and ELISA methods, serum hyaluronic acid has a sound value in diagnosing live cirrhosis. Its value in differentiating absent/present liver fibrosis is also acceptable. However, its value in differentiating mild/severe liver fibrosis needs to be further studied.
ObjectivesTo evaluate the quality of methodology and evidence of the exiting systematic reviews (SRs) of acupuncture therapy for post-stroke spastic paralysis.MethodsCNKI, CBM, The Cochrane Library, PubMed and EMbase databases were electronically searched to collect SRs of acupuncture therapy for post-stroke spastic paralysis from inception to December 16th, 2018. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and evaluated the quality of methodology and evidence by AMSTAR 2 scale and GRADE system.ResultsA total of 7 SRs were included. The results showed that acupuncture therapy had obvious advantages in treating post-stroke spastic paralysis without obvious adverse reactions. The results of AMSTAR 2 scale showed that the failure of key items 2 and 7 resulted in extremely low methodological quality. The results of GRADE system showed that 46.15% of which were low-level evidence quality, 42.31% were medium, 11.54% were extremely low, and no evidence quality were high.ConclusionsCurrent evidence shows that acupuncture and moxibustion therapy is effective in treating spastic paralysis after stroke, however, the quality of the SRs is low. The studies are required to be standardized and combined with the characteristics of TCM to obtain high quality evidence in the future.