Background & Aims: Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is an enzyme involved in vascular tonus, blood pressure, and platelet activation. Serum ADMA levels are increased in liver diseases such as liver cirrhosis, hepatitis and acute liver failure. The aim of our study was the assessment of the correlation of ADMA with proinflammatory, liver injury and cancer biomarkers in patients with liver dysfunction of various etiology.
Material and Methods: We analyzed the demographic and clinical data, including serum ADMA concentration and other biochemical markers such as albumin, platelets count, international normalized ratio, bilirubin and others in patients with hepatitis, compensated and decompensated liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The one-way ANOVA, Student t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, univariate and multivariate correlations were performed and p-value <0.05 was set as significant.
Results: In n=83 analyzed patients we have observed negative correlation of ADMA with albumin concentration (p=0.049). We have found negative correlation between ADMA and platelet count in n=31 patients with compensated liver cirrhosis (p=0.022). We have observed no significant correlations of ADMA and proinflammatory and cancer biomarkers in patients with hepatitis, compensated and decompensated liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Conclusions: ADMA can potentially be used as a subsidiary marker of disease progression in patients with liver dysfunction. Our research suggests that ADMA cannot be useful in detecting HCC.