Abstract: Objective To investigate the correlation between the levels of natural killer cells (NK) in peripheral blood and liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients, in order to provide guidance for the risk assessment and intervention of liver fibrosis.Methods A total of 83 CHB patients collected from March 2017 to February 2020 were studied. They were detected for their peripheral blood NK cell levels and evaluated the occurrence of histological liver fibrosis according to the Scheuer scoring system. The patients were divided into a liver fibrosis group (S1 stage-S4 stage) and a control group (S0 stage), Single and multi-factor logistic regression analyses were performed to analyze the influencing factors associated with liver fibrosis. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was drawn to evaluate the predictive value of peripheral blood NK cell level on liver fibrosis.Results Fifty-seven of the 83 (68.67%) CHB patients had liver fibrosis. The baseline data of the liver fibrosis group and the control group including gender, age, body mass index, course of disease, family history, smoking history, and drinking history were not different (P>0.05). However, the level of peripheral blood NK cells in patients of the liver fibrosis group was significantly lower than that of the control group (P<0.05). Low expression of NK cells in peripheral blood was found to be an influencing factor associated with liver fibrosis (OR>1, P<0.05).The Area Under Curve (AUC) of peripheral blood NK cell level for predicting the risk of liver fibrosis in CHB patients was 0.842, which had certain predictive value.Conclusion Low expression of NK cells in peripheral blood may be related to the progression of CHB and affect the occurrence of liver fibrosis. Early detection of peripheral blood NK cell levels may have a positive significance for predicting the fibrosis risk and improving the prognosis of CHB patients after early intervention.

Key words: Chronic hepatitis B, Liver fibrosis, Natural killer cells, Correlation