VIDEO: Risk for NASH may increase with type 2 diabetes
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BOSTON — In this exclusive video from The Liver Meeting 2019, Vlad Ratziu, MD, PhD, professor of hepatology at Sorbonne University and Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, discusses his poster presentation on the diagnostic aspects of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis in patients with type 2 diabetes.
“The interest of this biomarker, called NIS4, is that it allows classification of patients in those that have severe disease and those that have mild or no disease,” Ratziu told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. “It’s important to do this classification because patients with severe disease, defined as active steatohepatitis and severe fibrosis, are the ones that are currently believed to be in need for pharmacotherapy or at least the ones that are currently in phase 3 trials.”
Ratziu and colleagues analyzed the data of patients with type 2 diabetes (n = 835) from the RESOLVE-IT trial with the prevalence of at-risk NASH and clinical and biomechanical NASH phenotype assessed according to type 2 diabetes status and anti-diabetic treatments.
Type 2 diabetes (OR = 2.2; 95% CI, 1.85-2.62) and a disease activity score of 4 or greater (OR = 1.74; 95% CI, 1.4-2.16) increased the risk for NASH among those at risk, according to Ratziu. It was also a risk factor in patients with a fibrosis stage 2 or higher (OR = 2.3; 95% CI, 2.08-3.01).
“This study is very important in the sense of that once this biomarker becomes available on the market, people will start using it in order to select which patients will receive, hopefully, the new drugs for NASH without having to do a liver biopsy,” he said. – by Earl Holland Jr.
Reference: Hanf R, et al. Abstract 1757. Presented at: The Liver Meeting; Nov. 7-12, 2019; Boston.
Disclosures: Ratziu reports receiving consulting fees from Allergan, Boehringer Ingelheim, Galmed, Genfit, Intercept, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, and Pfizer; and grant and research support from Gilead and Intercept. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.