Prognostic Biomarkers in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: a Recent Review

Abstract

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fibrotic interstitial lung disease characterized by rapid progression, poor prognosis, and short median survival, seriously endangering patients' health. Early accurate prediction of the prognosis is an important part of the diagnosis and management process of IPF, which is conducive to the improvement of management and prognosis in IPF. A growing number of prognostic biomarkers for IPF have been discovered recently, and those with a high prognostic value could help to stratify prognostic risks and assess outcomes. We reviewed the latest literature about potential prognostic biomarkers of IPF, involving proteins, genes, microbial colonies and cells, and considered matrix metalloproteinase-7, telomere length and fibrocytes to be more reliable, while the prognostic values of Krebs von den lungen-6, surfactant protein A, and MUC5B promoter single nucleotide polymorphism are controversial and need to be further studied, and those of latent-transforming growth factor β-binding protein-2, angiopoietin-2, TOLLIP promoter SNP and microbial colony remain to be verified due to little evidence. It is hoped that our review could provide a reference for clinical selection of objective indicators for early identifying high-risk patients and timely initiating treatment, as well as future prognostic research on IPF.

Keywords

• idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis|pulmonary fibrosis|lung diseases, interstitial|biomarkers|telomere|prognosis|review|research progress