Echosens, NASHNET collaborate for real-world NAFLD screening study

Echosens announced a pilot study in collaboration with the NASH Network designed to appropriately identify patients with progressive nonalcoholic fatty liver disease using FibroScan, according to a press release.

“An estimated 30% of individuals in the U.S. are affected by NAFLD, with most patients undiagnosed,” Douglas Dieterich, MD, director of the Institute for Liver Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System, said in the release. “Given this high prevalence of disease, cost-effective risk stratification strategies need to be proven and adopted to target more effective assessments and interventions for those patients at greater risk of advancing liver disease.”

NASHNET will collect and analyze data on 6,500 patients over a 1-year period in the real-world evidence study.

According to Dietrich and the NASHNET steering committee, use of FibroScan in primary care and diabetic clinics may enable efficient and cost-effective early screening and subsequent disease identification.

“The study will evaluate care models that utilize FibroScan in conjunction with routine lab tests, lipidomic and metabolic profiles, magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), exploratory biomarkers, and morphometric analysis,” Dietrich said in the release. “The objective is to improve identification of patients with progressive NAFLD and reserve more costly assessments to those patients at greater risk for mortality and morbidity associated with the disease.”

Reference: www.echosens.com; www.nashnetwork.org