In a potential breakthrough for diagnosis and treatment development of liver disease, the Biomarkers Consortium’s Noninvasive Biomarkers of Metabolic Liver Disease (NIMBLE) project demonstrated that a blood test could diagnose nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an increasingly common liver disease in the U.S. The study, published in Nature Medicine, identified four biomarkers that outperform current liquid biopsies for NASH.
Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a condition that encompasses a range of liver disorders, from steatosis to fibrosis. In a recent study, researchers investigated the role of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase 1 (PCK1) in MAFLD progression in vivo. This work found that deficiency of the gluconeogenic enzyme PCK1 promoted the development of MAFLD through activation of the PI3K/AKT/PDGF axis.
