Scientists have created a calculator that can predict your risk of severe liver disease within seconds.
It requires a simple blood test to determine your enzyme levels, which are entered into the calculator alongside your age and sex. It will immediately predict your risk of liver disease within the next 10 years, and suggest further action where needed.
The calculator, called the Cirrhosis Outcome Risk Estimator (CORE), is available online for doctors, nurses, and anyone curious to try it, but they hope that it can eventually be rolled out in hospitals and clinics.
Karolinska Institutet researcher Rickard Strandberg said: “These are diseases that are growing increasingly common and that have a poor prognosis if detected late.
“Our method can predict the risk of severe liver disease within 10 years and is based on three simple routine blood tests.”
The researchers said the model was highly accurate and able to differentiate between people who did or did not develop the disease in nearly nine in 10 cases, which is higher than FIB-4, the current recommended method.
Professor Hannes Hagström, the study’s senior investigator, said: “Primary care hasn’t had the tools to detect the risk of severe liver disease in time. FIB-4 is not suited for the general population and is less effective at predicting the future risk of severe liver disease.”
The researchers developed the CORE model in the hope that it would be used more commonly.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, was a collaboration between Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and other universities in Finland.
It analysed data from nearly 500,000 people in Stockholm who underwent health checks between 1985 and 1996. It also analysed data of people from Finland and the UK.
Professor Hagström said: “This is an important step towards being able to offer early screening for liver disease in primary care.”
Research from earlier this year found that 80 per cent of England’s regional health bodies lacked an effective pathway to diagnose and manage liver disease. Although nine in 10 cases are preventable, there are more than 11,000 deaths due to liver disease each year, according to the British Liver Trust.
There are several types of liver disease, including alcohol-related liver disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, hepatitis, haemochromatosis, and primary biliary cholangitis.
Most types of liver disease do not cause symptoms in the early stages, according to the NHS. If the calculator developed by the researchers were to be rolled out in primary care, risk would be detected far earlier, and there could be earlier intervention, the researchers say.
Once symptoms of liver disease begin to surface, the liver is already damaged and scarred. This is known as cirrhosis, and symptoms include feeling constantly tired and weak, having a loss of appetite, a low libido, yellow or itchy skin, and feeling or being sick.
CORE predicts the 10-year risk of liver cancer or cirrhosis, which is liver scarring.
