Portal Fibrosis

I just got my test results back from my Fibrosure blood work.  The doctor says my Hep C has minimal activity right now and my test result is portal fibrosis.  Can anyone tell me what that means?

[copyman]

Hi and welcome,

that is good that the Fibrosure showed minimal activity but I'm not that sure how reliable that test is to diagnose portal fibrosis. according to the fibrosure report i had it states that portal fibrosis is stage 1. That is good because that test is only reliable for the low end and high end stages. At least you know you dont have cirrhosis.
You may want to consider a biopsy to make treatment decisions moving forward.
best of luck

[mike716]

Portal fibrosis means you have some fibrosis in your liver but that it is only around the portal spaces. (Don't ask what portal spaces are, it's too difficult to explain.) That's F1 on a scale of F0 to F4 (5 stages). The next stage is when the fibrosis around the portal spaces extends and forms bridges between them. That's bridging fibrosis, or F2. Maybe your liver is still just F1, which isn't too bad yet. But none of the tests is perfect, and Fibrosure is less reliable than a biopsy (although biopsy is only a small part of the liver).

Fibroscan is pretty good, but it has to be done by a very knowledgable and experienced operator.

There are also all sorts of blood marker fibrosis tests, as well as the usual hepatograms with transaminase levels.

Since none of the tests, not even biopsy, is 100% reliable, what a lot of people do is have a number of them done and see if they agree. That's probably the best way to guage your level of fibrosis progression.

But don't forget, where the fibrosis is at now is no measure of where it will be next year or the year later. That depends on how fast it's progressing, which in turn depends on all sorts of factors like age, weight, immune response to the virus, inflammation, diet, intake of harmful medicines and other substances, and lots of things that none one knows about yet.

So the best way to deal with it is to have more than one test done, and to repeat the tests as often as possible.

All the above is just one man's opinion, natch.

Mike