Wang J, Xia J, Yan X, et al. - Researchers examined the predictive value of plateletcrit (PCT) for liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Inclusion of 567 treatment-naïve CHB patients with available liver biopsies was done; of these, 378 patients formed a derivation cohort and 189 formed a validation cohort. In the derivation cohort, they noted lower PCT in CHB patients with S2-S4 (0.14%), S3-S4 (0.13%) and S4 (0.12%) than patients with S0-S1 (0.17%), S0-S2 (0.17%) and S0-S3 (0.16%), respectively. Findings suggest an independent predictive value of PCT for significant fibrosis (≥ S2), advanced fibrosis (≥ S3) and cirrhosis (S4). Higher AUROC was generated with PCT than the aspartate transaminase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) in recognizing advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis, while in recognizing significant fibrosis, this was comparable with APRI. PCT and fibrosis-4 score (FIB-4) had comparable diagnostic value for predicting significant fibrosis, advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis. These findings support that in CHB patients, PCT is a simple and inexpensive indicator for liver fibrosis. PCT is identified to be as good or better than other more complex tools for staging liver fibrosis in CHB patients.