Diagnostic Performance of LIVERFASt as a Non-invasive Liver Fibrosis Test: Data from Three Cohorts of Patients with Metabolic Dysfunction-associated Steatotic Liver Disease

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-26-2025

Publication Title

J Gastrointestin Liver Dis

Keywords

Humans, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Liver Cirrhosis, Biomarkers, Retrospective Studies, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Predictive Value of Tests, Aged, Prospective Studies, Adult, Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, Biopsy, Severity of Illness Index, Fatty Liver

Abstract

AIM: This study evaluates the diagnostic performance of the novel blood-based device, LIVERFASt to detect fibrosis stages in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), including those with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), compared to FIB-4 in a subgroup analysis.

METHODS: LIVERFASt is computed with 10 blood biomarkers and four anthropometric measures and provides a quantitative score (0.00-1.00) to stage cirrhosis (F4), advanced fibrosis (≥F3), and clinically significant fibrosis (≥F2). Three cohorts of patients (two retrospective and one prospective) from tertiary centers in Europe and the U.S. with histological-proven biopsy were used to assess LIVERFASt and FIB-4 diagnostic performance using area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC), sensitivity (Sn), specificity, and predictive values (PV) for varying fibrosis prevalence levels.

RESULTS: 497 MASLD adult patients were included (median age 56 years, 56.7% female, 50.3% T2DM, 44.1% advanced fibrosis, and 20.1% cirrhosis). In the pooled analysis, the AUROCs for fibrosis stages F4, ≥F3, and ≥F2 were: 0.868, 0.846, 0.748, as well as for the T2DM subgroup (n=250): 0.846, 0.798, 0.736, respectively. For 35% advanced fibrosis prevalence, the positive/negative PVs were 77.2%/81.3% for the overall cohort and 65.52%/79.81% for the subgroup with tT2DM, respectively. At high (90%) to low (1%) advanced fibrosis prevalences, the positive and negative PVs ranged from 93% to 4.28% and from 43.06% to 99.73%, respectively. For F4 and ≥F3 fibrosis stages, LIVERFASt outperformed FIB-4: AUROC 0.870 vs 0.851 and 0.874 vs 0.821 (p< 0.01), with Sn 74.07 vs 48.15 and 65.54 vs 37.29, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: LIVERFASt is a highly sensitive and clinically useful diagnostic test for staging fibrosis in MASLD patients, including those with T2DM and has a higher Sn for detecting advanced fibrosis when compared with FIB-4.

Medical Subject Headings

Humans; Female; Male; Middle Aged; Liver Cirrhosis; Biomarkers; Retrospective Studies; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2; Predictive Value of Tests; Aged; Prospective Studies; Adult; Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease; Biopsy; Severity of Illness Index; Fatty Liver

PubMed ID

41453093

Volume

34

Issue

4

First Page

437

Last Page

450

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