A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows that a simple blood test can help doctors find out who might get serious liver diseases like cirrhosis or liver cancer in the next 10 years.
This test is easy to use and could help catch these diseases earlier when they are easier to treat.
The research team included scientists from Sweden and Finland. They created a model called CORE that uses five things: a person’s age, sex, and the levels of three enzymes in the blood (AST, ALT, and GGT).
These are enzymes that are normally checked during regular health visits. By looking at these numbers, the model can guess how likely someone is to get a serious liver disease.
Doctors and nurses can use a web-based calculator that’s already available. The tool was designed for use in primary care, where people usually go for regular health checks.
The goal is to catch liver diseases early, especially now that new treatments are becoming available. These treatments could help people avoid liver failure or cancer if they are treated in time.
To build and test the CORE model, the scientists looked at data from more than 480,000 people in Stockholm who had health checks between 1985 and 1996. Over the next 30 years, around 1.5% of them developed serious liver problems or needed liver transplants.
The CORE model was able to correctly tell who would or wouldn’t get liver disease in 88% of the cases. This is better than the current FIB-4 method, which is not as accurate for the general public.
The CORE model was also tested on people from Finland and the UK. It worked well in those groups too. The researchers believe it could be a useful tool all over the world.
However, they say it still needs more testing on people with higher risks, such as those with type 2 diabetes or obesity. They also hope to link the tool to electronic health records to make it even easier to use.
The study was done with the help of Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki University, and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. One of the researchers, Professor Hannes Hagström, works with drug companies on liver disease studies, but not on anything related to this new test.
This research offers new hope for preventing severe liver disease by making early detection easier, safer, and more reliable.
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