A noninvasive scoring system may help distinguish patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease with advanced fibrosis from those without advanced fibrosis, thereby reducing the need for liver biopsy, according to the results of a study reported in the April 2 issue of Hepatology.
"Patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and advanced liver fibrosis are at the highest risk for progressing to end-stage liver disease," write Paul Angulo, MD, from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues. "In the absence of decompensated cirrhosis, liver biopsy remains the only reliable means to determine prognosis based on the severity of fibrosis. However, liver biopsy is an expensive and invasive procedure associated with a number of complications and prone to sampling error."
The investigators constructed and validated a scoring system using routinely measured and readily available clinical and laboratory data to separate NAFLD patients with and without advanced fibrosis.
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