An important limitation in the clinical management of NAFLD and NASH is the requirement for liver biopsy in order to definitively diagnose and stage the disease.6 Noninvasive methods for diagnosis of NAFLD and NASH have been developed, albeit with important limitations and the need for large validation studies. For example, several imaging techniques can be used to detect steatosis but are unable to stage liver fibrosis.7–9

Several individual proteins (hyaluronic acid and endothelin-1) and diagnostic biomarker panels (the NAFLD fibrosis score and the European Liver Fibrosis Panel) for identifying and staging NAFLD and NASH have been identified but not validated in prospective clinical studies with large https://www.selleckchem.com/products/Fulvestrant.html sample sizes.10–13 To address the urgent need for both increased understanding of NASH and identification of novel diagnostic biomarkers to facilitate diagnosis and treatment of liver disease, we applied a label-free quantitative proteomics approach (LFQP) to

profile the global protein expression of serum samples from patients with varying stages of NAFLD and obese controls. LFQP is a rapid, sensitive approach for quantification of many proteins in complex biological samples, including tissue, blood, or urine.14 The objectives of this study were to (1) identify differentially expressed serum proteins among different patient groups (control, simple steatosis, NASH, and NASH with advanced [F3/F4] fibrosis), and (2) use this information to discover biomarker candidates to diagnose and stage NAFLD. ALT, alanine aminotransferase; AUROC, area under the receiver operating curve; CV, coefficient of variation; learn more FC, fold change; FDR, false discovery rate;

FPR, false positive rate; LDA, linear discriminant analysis; LFQP, label-free quantitative proteomics; Amobarbital NAFLD, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease; NASH, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Blood samples used for proteomics studies were collected from NAFLD patients on the morning of their scheduled liver biopsy and control subjects in the fasting state. Blood was collected, centrifuged, aliquoted, and stored in plastic vials (NUNC, Rochester, NY) at −80°C until use. Sixty-nine subjects with suspected NAFLD who underwent a liver biopsy were enrolled in this study. The diagnosis of NAFLD was based on standard clinical, imaging, and histological criteria. Patients in the NAFLD group lacked significant alcohol consumption, viral hepatitis, autoimmune liver disease, and hemochromatosis. Histological diagnosis of NASH and extent of fibrosis were assessed by an experienced hepatopathologist. Based on liver histology, patients were classified into three groups: simple steatosis, NASH without advanced fibrosis (NASH, as defined by steatosis with lobular and/or portal inflammation and fibrosis stages 0-2), and NASH with advanced (F3/F4) fibrosis (defined the same as the NASH group but with fibrosis stages 3-4).