An artificial neural network improves the non-invasive diagnosis of significant fibrosis in HIV/HCV coinfected patients

作者：Resino Salvador^*; Antonio Seoane Jose; Maria Bellon Jose; Dorado Julian; Martin Sanchez Fernando; Alvarez Emilio; Cosin Jaime; Carlos Lopez Juan; Lopez Guilllermo; Miralles Pilar; Berenguer Juan

来源：Journal of Infection, 2011, 62(1): 77-86.

DOI：10.1016/j.jinf.2010.11.003

• AIDS
• Chronic hepatitis C
• Biological markers
• Liver fibrosis
• Hepatic biopsy
• Diagnosis

Objective: To develop an artificial neural network to predict significant fibrosis (F >= 2) (ANN-SF) in HIV/Hepatitis C (HCV) coinfected patients using clinical data derived from peripheral blood.
Methods: Patients were randomly divided into an estimation group (217 cases) used to generate the ANN and a test group (145 cases) used to confirm its power to predict F >= 2. Liver fibrosis was estimated according to the METAVIR score. Results: The values of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) of the ANN-SF were 0.868 in the estimation set and 0.846 in the test set. In the estimation set, with a cutoff value of <0.35 to predict the absence of F >= 2, the sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp), and positive (PPV) and negative predictive values (NPV) were 94.1%, 41.8%, 66.3% and 85.4% respectively. Furthermore, with a cut-off value of >0.75 to predict the presence of F >= 2, the ANN-SF provided Se, Sp, PPV and NPV of 53.8%, 94.9%, 92.8% and 62.8% respectively. In the test set, with a cut-off value of <0.35 to predict the absence of F >= 2, the Se, Sp, PPV and NPV were 91.8%, 51.7%, 72.9% and 81.6% respectively. Furthermore, with a cut-off value of >0.75 to predict the presence of F >= 2, the ANN-SF provided Se, Sp, PPV and NPV of 43.5%, 96.7%, 94.9% and 54.7% respectively.
Conclusion: The ANN-SF accurately predicted significant fibrosis and outperformed other simple non-invasive indices for HIV/HCV coinfected patients. Our data suggest that ANN may be a helpful tool for guiding therapeutic decisions in clinical practice concerning HIV/HCV coinfection.

• 出版日期2011-1