Author information
1NAFLD Research Center, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California; Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Musashino Red Cross Hospital, Tokyo, Japan.
2NAFLD Research Center, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California.
3Department of Pathology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California.
4Sharp Medical Group, Department of Pathology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California.
5NAFLD Research Center, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California. Electronic address: roloomba@ucsd.edu.
Abstract
The Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) Activity Score (NAS) has been applied as a method for evaluating treatment response, and a ≥2-point improvement in NAS has been commonly used as an accepted end point in phase 2b clinical trials in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.1,2 Although liver fibrosis is the strongest histologic predictor of liver-related outcome and all-cause mortality in NAFLD,3,4 the association between change in NAS and change in fibrosis stage has not been fully verified. Therefore, we aimed to examine the association between change in NAS and change in fibrosis stage in well-characterized patients with NAFLD who had a paired liver biopsy assessment.