( ican Liver Foundation. Chronic infectio...)New test helps identify hepatitis C patients at high risk of developing cirrhosis

ican Liver Foundation. Chronic infection can lead to the severe scarring known as cirrhosis, which in turn may result in liver cancer or liver failure. Hepatitis C infection is the most common reason people need a liver transplant in the United States and is responsible for between 8,000 and 10,000 U.S. deaths annually.

But in the majority of people chronically infected with hepatitis C, the virus causes either no symptoms or vague, nonspecific ones. In around one-third of people chronically infected with the virus, the disease progression is slow and they may never develop cirrhosis, even after decades of infection.

The dilemma physicians face, explained Cheung, is deciding who to treat and who can wait for better therapies to come along. The key is being able to determine which patients are likely to see the infection progress to cirrhosis. Doctors consider such factors as age, gender and alcohol consumption to predict such risk, but because of individual variability, these factors don't yield a very accurate prediction. A liver biopsy can indicate the amount of damage to the liver up until the time of the biopsy, but can't reveal how much future damage will occur.

The new test assessed by Cheung and his colleagues is a way to hedge the bets.

The lead author of the paper is Hongjin Huang, PhD, associate director of liver diseases at Celera in Alameda, Calif. Huang and her Celera colleagues developed the test by initially scanning the DNA of more than 1,000 people who had hepatitis C. Out of 25,000 genetic variations tested, the researchers discovered seven that could be used together as a "signature" for predicting progression to cirrhosis in Caucasians.

The resulting gene signature - the Cirrhosis Risk Score - was then independently validated on 154 hepatitis C patients at Stanford, the University of Illinois-Chicago and California Pacific Medical Center. Among patients with early-stage li
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Source:Stanford University Medical Center

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