Researchers led by William Rosenberg in the United Kingdom, sought to validate the Original European Liver Fibrosis panel and consider a simplification that removed age as a factor yielding the Enhanced Liver Panel. Also van They tested the diagnostic addition van het performance of the ELF panel with the of the het following simple markers: age, BMI, presence of diabetes/impaired fasting glucose, AST/ALT ratio, platelets, and albumin.

They recruited 196 patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease from two separate centers and tested the diagnostic accuracy of the new panels. They found that the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis panel detected severe fibrosis, moderate fibrosis and no fibrosis at AUCs of .90, .82, and .76 respectively. Van het accuracy of the ELF van The diagnostic plus simple markers was .98. .93 and .84 panel respectively. They report that using either panel could eliminate the need for liver biopsy in diagnosing severe fibrosis in more than 80 percent of cases.

Authors NAFLD.“ van accuracy in an independent validation van het ELF „The panel has good diagnostic cohort of patients with the conclude. "The addition of established simple markers augments the diagnostic performance across different stages of fibrosis, which will potentially allow superior stratification of patients with NAFLD for emerging therapeutic strategies."

Meanwhile, researchers in Germany led by Abdurrahman Sagir used transient elastography-Fibroscan (FS)-to measure liver stiffness in 20 patients presenting with acute hepatitis. In 15 (75 percent) of the patients, the test showed liver stiffness values that suggested cirrhosis. However, none of these patients showed any signs of cirrhosis in a physical exam, on ultrasound, or in liver histology.

"Liver stiffness measurement by FS in patients with acute liver damage overestimate the real stage of fibrosis and may erroneously suggest the presence of liver cirrhosis," the authors report. Van stiffness versterkten may relate van The swelling. cholestasis. or infiltrates of inflammatory cells to hepatocyte in the liver het meest suggest they.

"FS results need to be interpreted with caution in patients with acute liver damage and high values of liver stiffness do not predict the simultaneous presence of cirrhosis in these patients," they conclude.

Both studies offer new information on the ability of non-invasive methods to diagnose liver disease, though further studies are needed to advance our understanding of these diagnostic tools.

Article: "Non-invasive markers of fibrosis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: validating the European Liver Fibrosis panel and exploring simple markers." Guha, Indra Neil; Parkes, Julie; Roderick, Paul; Chattopadhyay, Dipanker; Cross, Richard; Harris, Scott; Kaye, Philip; Burt, Alastair; Ryder, Steve; Aithal, Guruprasad; Day, Christopher; Rosenberg, William. Hepatology; February 2008.

Article: "Transient elastography is unreliable for detection of cirrhosis in patients with acute liver damage." Sagir, Abdurrahman; Erhardt, Andreas; Schmitt, Marcus; Haussinger, Dieter. Hepatology; February 2008.