A Swedish team created a test that predicts severe liver disease years ahead. It could help doctors detect risk early using routine blood data.
A recent study , published in The BMJ, demonstrates that a simple blood test can forecast an individual’s likelihood of developing serious liver disease. This approach could soon be introduced in primary healthcare to help identify cirrhosis and liver cancer at earlier stages.
“These are diseases that are growing increasingly common and that have a poor prognosis if detected late,” says Rickard Strandberg, affiliated researcher at Karolinska Institutet who has developed the test with his departmental colleague Hannes Hagström. “Our method can predict the risk of severe liver disease within 10 years and is based on three simple routine blood tests.”
“This is an important step towards being able to offer early screening for liver disease in primary care,” says principal investigator Hannes Hagström, adjunct professor at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Medicine in Huddinge, and senior consultant at Karolinska University Hospital. “Drug treatment is now available, soon hopefully also in Sweden, for treating people at a high risk of developing liver diseases such as cirrhosis or liver cancer.”
The study analyzed health data from more than 480,000 Stockholm residents who underwent medical examinations between 1985 and 1996. Over a follow-up period of up to 30 years, approximately 1.5 percent of participants developed serious liver conditions, including cirrhosis and liver cancer, or required a liver transplant.
