Developed by a French team, a diagnostic tool identifies cases of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
It’s a health time bomb. In France, approximately 900,000 people have too fatty a liver. They suffer from non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). On July 6 and 7, a symposium is devoted to this disease of the modern world. Gathered at the Institut Pasteur (Paris), the specialists took stock of scientific knowledge.
Accurate screening
Among the advances in 2017 is the development of a screening test by a team made up of several French university hospitals. baptized eLIFT, it was published earlier this year in the Journal of Hepatology. It detects NASH cases with 78% efficiency, and produces fewer false positive results than the tests currently used.
eLIFT is in fact an algorithm based on several biological parameters: the patient’s age, sex, but also platelets, prothrombin, aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT) and gamma-glutamyl transferase (Gamma-GT).
From the measurements, the device calculates whether or not NASH is present. A positive result should lead to further examinations by a hepato-gastroenterologist.
But once the diagnosis is made, no drug treatment can reverse the situation. A patient who suffers from NASH must modify his lifestyle – in terms of nutrition and physical activity. It is only at this price that he will be able to enter into remission. Because at the early stage, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis is still reversible. But not taking care of it leads to an evolution towards cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Supportive surgery
The majority of NASH patients are also obese. Several teams have therefore turned to an emerging treatment: bariatric surgery. This approach may well offer welcome relief to the sick. According to a study carried out in France and published in 2015, the operation leads to remission in 85% of cases.
Inflammation of the liver and its swelling are reduced a year after the operation. These benefits were confirmed by a study conducted on 890 obese people, 261 of whom suffered from NASH. It was presented during the Francophone Days of Hepato-gastroenterology and Digestive Oncology (JFHOD) in March.
5 years after bariatric surgery, the proportion of patients with NASH fell from 28 to 14.9%. But these results will have to be confirmed in the long term. Indeed, weight regains are frequent several years after the operation.
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