Metabolic syndrome and allograft non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common occurrence after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). NAFLD and hepatitis C virus (HCV) are frequently associated. The association steatosis/HCV determines important implications for clinical practice: steatosis accelerates the progression of fibrosis and reduces the likelihood of obtaining a sustained vir...

Obesity and metabolic syndrome are healthcare problems that continue to rise in frequency worldwide. Both phenotypes are a strong predictor for development of liver steatosis in the context of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Ultrasound may detect steatosis, but its sensitivity is limited and liver biopsy is still considered to be the gold standard. Less invas...

OBJECTIVE To assess the diagnostic value of a particular set of local intensity parameters extracted from ultrasound liver images in conjunction with support vector machine (SVM) classifiers for liver steatosis grading in respect to the "gold standard" provided by liver biopsy. MATERIAL AND METHODS We prospectively enrolled in the study 228 patients with chronic hepatopathies. All the patient...

AIM To investigate micro (mi)R-34a-antagonizing circular (circ)RNA that underlies hepatocellular steatosis. METHODS The effect of circRNA on miR-34a was recognized by the miRNA response element (MRE), and validated by the dual-luciferase reporter assay. Its association with hepatocellular steatosis was investigated in HepG2-based hepatocellular steatosis induced by free fatty acids (FFAs; 2:1...

Ultrasound B-mode imaging based on log-compressed envelope data has been widely applied to examine hepatic steatosis. Modeling raw backscattered signals returned from the liver parenchyma by using statistical distributions can provide additional information to assist in hepatic steatosis diagnosis. Since raw data are not always available in modern ultrasound systems, information entropy, which ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome related to insulin resistance. Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is mainly produced by hepatocytes and its secretion is stimulated by growth hormone. Our aim was to assess possible changes in IGF-1 levels in patients with different ultrasonography stages of NAFLD and its assoc...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) recognize obesity and insulin resistance (IR) as common pathogenic background. We assessed 1) whether PCOS is a risk factor for steatosis, and 2) the impact, in PCOS patients, of IR and hyperandrogenism on steatosis and fibrosis. METHODS We considered 202 consecutive Italian PCOS nondiabetic pati...

BACKGROUND Aortic stenosis (AS) leads to left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and dysfunction. We hypothesized that cardiac steatosis is involved in the pathophysiology and also assessed whether it is reversible after aortic valve replacement. METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-nine patients with severe AS (symptomatic=25, asymptomatic=14) with normal LV ejection fraction and no significant coronary art...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Tumour necrosis factor related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) induces apoptosis in transformed cells and is considered as an agent for cancer therapy. As there is evidence that TRAIL is also essential for apoptosis in animal models of liver injury, we investigated the role of TRAIL in viral hepatitis and after alcohol consumption. METHODS Expression of TRAIL was determi...

INTRODUCTION Non-invasive assessment of steatosis and fibrosis is of growing relevance in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). 1H-Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) and the ultrasound-based controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) correlate with biopsy proven steatosis, but have not been correlated with each other so far. We therefore performed a head-to-head comparison between both m...