A new test to determine if fibrosis (cirrhosis) is present in the liver is now available and is a breakthrough for patients with liver disease. This new test is called a Fibrosure or Fibrotest. In the past, the standard test to determine the physical state of the liver tissue was a liver biopsy. During a liver biopsy a fine needle is pushed into the liver and a sample of liver tissue is taken and then sent to a laboratory where a pathologist examines it under a powerful microscope. The pathologist can see if the liver cells are damaged and how much scar tissue is present in the liver tissue. If there is a lot of scar tissue the patient is diagnosed with cirrhosis. The amount of scar tissue determines the stage of cirrhosis from mild to severe. There are several problems and limitations with a liver biopsy
  • Only a small area of the liver is sampled – thus the biopsy may miss other parts of the liver which are more or less diseased
  • There are risks to the procedure such as bleeding and infection
  • The procedure is unpleasant, scary and incurs some discomfort.
Thus it’s easy to understand why a new non-invasive blood test to check for cirrhosis is a huge welcome relief for patients with chronic liver disease. The Fibrosure test is a blood test which measures several different naturally occurring substances in the blood which give an indirect indication of chronic liver inflammation and through a mathematical calculation this is converted to a score for fibrosis. Fibrosis is the same as scarring.  Scar tissue consists of hard fibrous tissue. Cirrhosis is caused by scar tissue building up in the liver. The Fibrosure blood test measures the amount of the following substances in your blood: Alpha 2 macroglobulins (normal range = 110 to 276 mg/dL) Haptoglobulin (normal range = 34 to 200 mg/dL) Apolipoprotein A-1 (normal range = 110 to 205 mg/dL) Bilirubin total (normal range = 0 to 1.2 mg/dL) GGT (normal range = 0 to 60 IU/L) ALT (normal range = 0 to 40 IU/L) No need for you to remember these parameters, they are just included in case you want to research them further. The important thing is that these values are combined mathematically to create a score for you which will determine the following – Fibrosis Score (normal range = 0 to 0.21) – you want this to be low Fibrosis stage from 1 to 5 – you want this to be low Necro-inflammatory activity score (normal range = 0 to 0.17) – you want this to be low Necro-inflammatory activity grade – this is graded from mild to severe – you want this to be mild The Fibrosis score and stage determine the amount of scarring in your liver. The Necro-inflammatory activity score and grade determine the amount of inflammation in your liver and this is important because chronic inflammation in the liver causes the scar tissue to build up and destroys healthy liver cells. If we can reduce the inflammation with nutritional medicine we can reverse some of the damage and even better, prevent the scar tissue from increasing anymore.  Remember that of all the organs in the body, the liver is most able to repair and regenerate itself.  For more information see my book The Liver Cleansing Diet. The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease.