Dynamic liver tests in liver disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Changes in dynamic liver function tests in patients with chronic viral hepatitis undergoing antiviral therapy.
IRAS ID
185320
Contact name
Graham Foster
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Barts Health NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 9 days
Research summary
Chronic viral hepatitis often leads to liver scarring - cirrhosis. If the virus is eradicated from the liver, the liver scarring and liver function often recovers. In some patients the damage is too severe and recovery does not take place. It is not yet known which patients have liver disease that is too advanced to benefit from therapy nor is it known how fast the recovery occurs.
Non-intrusive dynamic liver testing (DLT) may allow us to predict the functionality of the liver post treatment and may guide us in treatment choices - for example patients who are predicted not to recover may be prioritised for transplantation. Indocyanine green (ICG) is a dye solely excreted by the liver into bile and used to measure its dynamic function. Transient elastography is similar to ultrasound and measures the degree of fibrosis within the liver.
We hypothesise that the use of DLT pre-treatment, will allow us to delineate patients before therapy who will have functional liver recovery following viral eradication.
We hypothesise that monitoring changes in liver fibrosis and liver function in patients with historical viral clearance will allow an assessment of the likely speed of recovery of liver fibrosis and function - for example if all patients 5 years after treatment for viral hepatitis induced cirrhosis have 'normal' fibrosis and liver function scores we will be able to conclude that recovery is complete within 5 years.
We will assess liver function pre and post-treatment, using DLT in addition to currently-used 'liver function' scoring systems, in a multivariate analysis, to determine whether or not we can identify patients who will have functional liver recovery post therapy.
REC name
Wales REC 7
REC reference
16/WA/0082
Date of REC Opinion
11 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion