Advanced Liver Fibrosis Predicts Unfavorable Long-Term Prognosis in First-Ever Ischemic Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack
Minyoul Baik, Hyo Suk Nam, Ji Hoe Heo, Hyungjong Park, Beom Kyung Kim, Jun Yong Park, Do Young Kim, Sang Hoon Ahn, Kwang‐Hyub Han, Hye Sun Lee, Seung Up Kim, Young Dae Kim
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: There are a limited number of studies investigating the relationship between the degree of liver fibrosis and the long-term prognosis, especially ischemic stroke (IS) recurrence, in first-ever IS or transient ischemic attack (TIA). OBJECTIVE: We investigated whether there are differences in the long-term all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities and IS recurrence based on the degree of liver fibrosis in first-ever IS or TIA. METHODS: This analysis included 2,504 patients with first-ever IS or TIA recruited from a prospective stroke cohort. Liver fibrosis was predicted using the fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) index, and advanced fibrosis was defined as an FIB-4 index of >3.25. Using Cox regression models, we compared the all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities and IS recurrence. As measures for the additive predictive value of the FIB-4 index for prediction of all-cause mortality, the integrated area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (iAUC), net reclassification improvement (NRI), and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) were used. RESULTS: There were 231 (9.2%) patients with advanced fibrosis. During a median follow-up of 1.2 years, the cumulative all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities were 6.4 and 1.9%, and IS recurrence was observed in 5.3%. The advanced fibrosis was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR] = 3.98, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.40-6.59), cardiovascular mortality (HR = 4.48, 95% CI = 1.59-12.65), and IS recurrence (HR = 1.95, 95% CI = 1.05-3.65). Adding the FIB-4 index to the model consisting of traditional cardiovascular risk factors improved the predictive accuracy for all-cause mortality as measured using the iAUC (from 0.7594 to 0.7729) and for all-cause mortality at 1 year as measured using the NRI (38.6%) and IDI (0.037). CONCLUSIONS: The burden of liver fibrosis is associated with unfavorable long-term prognosis, including recurrent IS, in first-ever IS or TIA.