Simple blood test predicts liver diseases years before symptoms

“These are diseases that grow increasingly increasingly and have a weak diagnosis if detected late,” says Recard Strandberg, a researcher at the Carolinska Medicine Department in Hudding, who has developed the test with his colleague in the Hans Hans Hasstrom departments. “Our method can be predicted by the risk of severe liver disease within 10 years and is based on three simple routine tests.”

For the study, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and their colleagues in Finland assessed the quality of the method of extreme risk of severe liver disease. The model, called CORE, was produced by advanced statistical methods and is based on five factors: age, sex and common liver enzyme levels (AST, Alt and GGT), which are usually measured during regular health checks.

Internet calculator

Their goal was to produce an easy -to -use tool in primary care, as most patients first search for medical attention. Web calculator is already available for doctors and nurses in www.core-model.com.

“This is an important step towards the ability to provide an early examination of liver disease in primary care,” said the main researcher Hans Hans Hsstrom, an assistant professor at the Carolinska Medicine Department in Hoding, and a chief adviser at the University of Carolinska University Hospital. “Treatment of drugs is now available, and we also hope in Sweden to treat people at a great risk to issue liver disease such as liver cirrhosis or liver cancer.”

The study relies on data from more than 480,000 people in Stockholm who have undergone health tests between 1985 and 1996. With regard to the participants for up to 30 years, researchers can see that about 1.5 percent of severe liver disease, such as liver fibrosis and liver cancer, or need liver transplantation.

Predicting very precise risks

The main model has proven very accurate and was able to distinguish between people who either either or did not get sick in 88 percent of cases, and it is an improvement in the currently recommended FIB-4 method.

Professor Hsstrom says: “The initial care had no tools to discover the risk of severe liver disease in time,” says Professor Hagstrom. “FIB-4 is not suitable for the general population and is less effective in predicting the future risks of severe liver disease.”

The model was also tested on two groups of population in Finland and the United Kingdom, as it again showed a high accuracy in the prediction of this danger. However, researchers explain this point that must be tested on groups that are particularly at risk, such as people with type 2 diabetes or obesity. They also realize the need to integrate the model into medical record systems to facilitate its clinical use.

The study was a cooperation between the Carolinska Institute, the Helsinki University Hospital, the Helsinki University and the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare. It was funded by the Swedish Research Council, the Stockholm region (CIMED) and the Swedish Cancer Society. Hannes Hagström is involved in many cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry with regard to diagnosis of liver diseases, but there is nothing related to the current study.