Results: The average age of patients was 59.59±11.75 and most of them (74.3%) were women. Most patients (75.71%) with a normal to mild FIB-4 index stage had a normal to mild elastography stage. of patients had normal to mild liver fibrosis. FibroScan grade were not related to the age, gender, body mass index, methotrexate dose and duration of the disease (P>0.05). The average FIB-4 was 1.25±0.6, which was not significantly related to gender, body mass index, disease duration and methotrexate dose but directly related to the age of patients (P<0.001, (CL95%, 0.51-0.53)).The correlation between FIB-4 and FibroScan grade of the patients showed a positive association, which was not statistically significant (P=0.594, r=0.06, CL95%, -0.24-0.4). The FIB-4 in normal to mild grade was 85% rejecting the moderate to severe grade in FibroScan but none of them were statistically significant (P=0.146).
Conclusion: Overall, the FIB-4 was incapable of predicting the FibroScan result. On the contrary, this case was also inconclusive and the results of FibroScan did not justify FIB-4 results of the patients. The FIB-4 cannot replace in RA patients. It is recommended to conduct future studies with a larger sample size in RA patients. |