【Abstract】 Objective o investigate the feasibility of using serum long intergenic noncoding RNAp21 (lincRNAp21) as a biomarker for liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B patients. Methods Serum lincRNAp21 levels were quantified using realtime PCR in 320 CHB patients and 300 healthy controls. ROC curve analyses was used to study the diagnostic value of serum lincRNAp21 for liver fibrosis in CHB patients. Correlation analyses was used to analyze the association between serum lincRNAp21 and biomarkers of liver fibrosis. Results Sera from hepatitis Binfected patients contained lower levels of lincRNAp21 than sera from healthy controls (P＜0.01). Serum lincRNAp21 levels negatively correlated with stages of liver fibrosis in infected patients. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses suggested that serum lincRNAp21 had a significant diagnostic value for liver fibrosis in these patients. It yielded an area under the curve of ROC of 0.825 (95%CI: 0.8030.899) with 100% sensitivity and 69% specificity in discriminating liver fibrosis from healthy controls. There was additionally a negative correlation between serum lincRNAp21 level and the markers of liver fibrosis including αSMA (r=-0.685, P＜0.001) and Col1A1 (r=-0.725, P＜0.001). However, there was no correlation of serum lincRNAp21 level with the markers of viral replication, liver inflammatory activity, and liver function. Conclusion Serum lincRNAp21 could serve as a potential biomarker of liver fibrosis in CHB patients.