Original ResearchFull Report: Clinical—LiverSimple Noninvasive Systems Predict Long-term Outcomes of Patients With Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Section snippets
Patients and Methods
This was a retrospective, international, multicenter cohort study of 320 patients with well-characterized and liver biopsy−confirmed NAFLD. They were untreated, consecutively biopsied patients that met the eligibility criteria as described here, and were recruited before 2002 from the following medical centers: University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, KY; Westmead Hospital, Sydney Australia; Newcastle Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK;
Baseline Characteristics
Table 1 describes the baseline characteristics of the 320 patients. Median age was 52 years (interquartile range, 43−61 years) with a similar distribution of men and women. There was a predominance of white race and overweight or obese individuals, and about one third to more than a half of patients suffered from diabetes, hypertension, or dyslipidemia. Mean ALT and AST were about twice normal, and there was a uniform distribution of patients across the stages of fibrosis. Mean values of each
Discussion
Our study demonstrates that simple baseline noninvasive scores allow appropriate identification of patients with NAFLD at a higher risk of developing liver-related complications, or the outcome of death/liver transplantation. Given the ready availability of the data and the simplicity of the calculation, along with the relatively high accuracy in separating patients' risks, these scores seems to be valuable and practical tools that can be used clinically for patient counseling and monitoring.
Acknowledgments
Title and abstract edited by Gastroenterology Science Editor, Kristine Novak, PhD.
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Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.
Funding This study was supported by a National Institute of Health R01 DK82426 grant (to P. Angulo) and The European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. HEALTH-F2-2009-241762 for the project FLIP (to E. Bugianesi). J. George is supported by grants from the Sydney Medical Foundation and grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council (632630 and 1049857). These sponsors played no role in the study design or the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.
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Authors share co-senior authorship.