A heartwarming post to start your week AND it is relevant to MASLD and MASH.
Madeleine Chang is a high school senior at Arnold O. Beckman High School in Orange County, California,. She has a strong interest in biology and medicine, and has (with her brother Devon Chang, also a high-school student) been working with Dr. Mazen Noureddin, MD, MHSc, Hepatologist from Houston Research Institute on MASLD research for the last two to three years. We used the words 'heart warming' because it is so great seeing people as young as high-school students passionately exploring science in an effort to help patients! Madeleine is the first author of this paper!
Together with other notable co-authors including Dr. Naim Alkhouri, MD, FAASLDi, the late and very missed Dr. Stephen Harrison, Devon Chang, Sudha Kodali and Mark Ghobrial wrote a paper that was very recently published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, titled, "Degree of Discordance between FIB-4 and Transient Elastography: An application of current guidelines on general population cohort".
Key takeaways of this video chat discussion include:
1. 10% Misclassification Risk: FIB-4, while a cost-effective and widely used non-invasive test, misclassified 10% of patients as low-risk, who were later found to be at higher risk based on transient elastography.
2. Importance of Follow-Up Testing: The study recommends that primary care physicians consider annual or biannual testing and explore additional tools like transient elastography or machine learning models to improve accuracy.
3. Focus on High-Risk Patients: Patients with comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes and higher BMI are more prone to misclassification, underscoring the need for careful monitoring in these populations.
4. Need for Continued Research: The findings suggest that ongoing research and refinement of non-invasive tests are crucial to improve patient outcomes and reduce the burden on specialist services.
Madeleine shared this: "Although we did highlight some of the limitations in our study, currently FIB-4 is highly effective and widely utilized and a cost-effective test that is accessible to primary care physicians. So we do recommend to continue on with the pathway. As Dr. Noureddin mentioned, we're just suggesting the idea of exploring possible alternatives, such as we highlighted in the paper, SAFE Score, MASEF, NIS-2, and machine learning models."
https://lnkd.in/g4pxZrVX
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