NIS4 for non-invasive diagnosis of NASH and liver fibrosis

Commentary

S. A. Harrison et al. (University of Oxford, UK) report the development and validation of a blood-based diagnostic test to non-invasively rule in and rule out at-risk NASH.

In their prospective derivation and global validation study, derivation was done in the discovery cohort, which comprised 239 prospectively recruited patients with biopsy-confirmed NASH. The overall diagnostic performance of NIS4 was externally validated in two independent cohorts.

The derived NIS4 algorithm comprised four independent NASH-associated biomarkers (miR-34a-5p, alpha-2 macroglobulin, YKL-40, and glycated haemoglobin).

NIS4 is a novel blood-based diagnostic that provides an effective way to non-invasively rule in or rule out at-risk NASH in patients with metabolic risk factors and suspected disease.