Epidemiology and analysis of the risk factors of autoimmune liver disease

Abstract:

Objective：To investigate the epidemiologic feature and related risk factors of different type of autoimmune liver diseases （ALD）. Methods：A total of 111 patients with ALD from August 2012 to August 2018 in our hospital were selected as study objects and were divided into autoimmune hepatitis（AIH），primary biliary cirrhosis（PBC），primary sclerosing cholangitis（PSC） and AIH-PBC overlapping syndrome（OS） according to the diagnosis. The PSC group had only one patient and was excluded. The differences of gender，age，personal history，documents related with concomitant diseases and laboratory examination in each group were retrospec－tively analyzed. Results：The average onset age in AIH，PBC，and OS groups was（53.29±12.43） years old，（62.91±11.61） years old and （63.05±11.40） years old，respectively；the difference among groups was statistically significant（P<0.01）. The genetic family history was statistically significant among groups（P<0.05）. The positive rate of anti-mitochondrial antibody M2 in the AIH，the PBC and the OS group were 23.2%，52.8% and 70.5%，respectively，with statistical significance（P<0.01）. Aspartate aminotransferase（P<0.01） and cholinesterase（P<0.05） were statistically significant between the AIH group and the PBC group. Aaspartate aminotrans－ferase（P<0.05），cholinesterase（P<0.05） and alkaline phosphatase（P<0.05） among three groups had significant differences. Smoking，drinking，gender，medication history，clinical symptoms，EB virus and cytomegalovirus infection，and humoral immunity were not sta－tistically different among three groups（P>0.05）. Conclusion：AIH is the most common type of ALD. AIH has a younger onset in all types of ALD，and different types of ALD have a certain genetic predisposition. Aspartate aminotransferase and cholinesterase are par－ticularly elevated in AIH，and cholinesterase is more prominent in PBC. The positive rate of anti-mitochondrial antibody M2 type is the highest in OS. As for risk factors，smoking，gender，drinking，medication history，EB virus and cytomegalovirus infection have limit－ed significance in the group identification of ALD.