Beyond traditional—the sick cirrhosis patient scores integrating cytokine and immune profiling for precision prognosis in hospitalized cirrhosis patients may help predict infection, ICU admission and long-term death post hospitalization

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Source: Frontiers Medicine

Original: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2026.1736956...

Published: 2026-01-21T00:00:00Z

The study examined 78 hospitalized patients with liver cirrhosis who had a mean MELD3 score of 25.14; 38.5% of them required ICU admission and 12–24-month mortality was 43.6%. Inflammatory biomarkers and immune profiles provide prognostic value beyond traditional severity scores. Independent predictors of infection were procalcitonin ≥0.40 ng/mL, IL-6 ≥84 pg/mL, and creatinine ≥1.35 mg/dL (AUC 0.74). Hepatic encephalopathy, variceal bleeding, procalcitonin ≥0.40 ng/mL, and IL-6 ≥53.69 pg/mL (AUC 0.82) predicted ICU admission. Long-term mortality was predicted by ICU admission, hemoglobin ≤11.5 g/dl, EGF ≤2.9 pg/ml, and absolute nucleated cell count ≤3600/μl (AUC 0.821). The research proposes a new "Sick Cirrhosis Patient Score" integrating these markers for better risk stratification, but requires external validation.