S5 - E5.3 - Strategies to Improve NIT reliability in Diagnosing and Staging MASH Fibrosis

Send us Fan MailThis conversation focuses more tightly on the specific challenges with the current approaches that use NITs to diagnose and stage advanced MASH fibrosis and explores several newer options and ways of thinking about the challenge.Roger Green notes that recent papers discuss the failure to predict accurately with FIB-4. He asks how we can improve predictive performance. Louise Campbell notes some specific challenges, after which Jörn Schattenberg praises John Dillon's work in automating lab detection algorithms. He also reiterates his view that repeat testing will be pivotal in good test protocols. Ian Rowe rejoins the conversation (from a faulty Internet connection) to comment that our inability to stage patients reliably will lead to government payers like NHS believing that they will need biopsy to stage patients accurately and treat them cost-effectively. Jörn says Germany will work differently and if EMA approves it, it will launch in Germany.Roger asks about new tests on the horizon and specifically whether there is sufficient improvement in diagnosis, staging or treatment. He refers specifically to MASEF and Naim Alkhouri's earlier comments about four scan vendors at his conference. Ian says there are tests that can rise to this task, but they are not produced in sufficient quantity and cost too much to become a first-line option. Naim notes that the most exciting tests are a couple of years away. Ian returns to Jörn's earlier point about the value of sequential testing vs an individual test. Louise suggests that device size will be pivotal for primary care.