Gîlcă-Blanariu Georgiana-Emmanuela, Budur Daniela Simona, Mitrică Dana Elena, Gologan Elena, Timofte Oana, Bălan Gheorghe Gh, Olteanu Vasile Andrei, Ștefănescu Gabriela
Gastroenterology Department, "Grigore T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 700115 Iași, Romania.
Department of Gastroenterology, "Sf Spiridon" County Clinical Emergency Hospital, 100115 Iași, Romania.
Metabolites. 2023 Oct 29;13(11):1115. doi: 10.3390/metabo13111115.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) currently represents one of the most common liver diseases worldwide. Early diagnosis and disease staging is crucial, since it is mainly asymptomatic, but can progress to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) or cirrhosis or even lead to the development of hepatocellular carcinoma. Over time, efforts have been put into developing noninvasive diagnostic and staging methods in order to replace the use of a liver biopsy. The noninvasive methods used include imaging techniques that measure liver stiffness and biological markers, with a focus on serum biomarkers. Due to the impressive complexity of the NAFLD's pathophysiology, biomarkers are able to assay different processes involved, such as apoptosis, fibrogenesis, and inflammation, or even address the genetic background and "omics" technologies. This article reviews not only the currently validated noninvasive methods to investigate NAFLD but also the promising results regarding recently discovered biomarkers, including biomarker panels and the combination of the currently validated evaluation methods and serum markers.
非酒精性脂肪性肝病（NAFLD）目前是全球最常见的肝脏疾病之一。早期诊断和疾病分期至关重要，因为它主要无症状，但可进展为非酒精性脂肪性肝炎（NASH）或肝硬化，甚至导致肝细胞癌的发生。随着时间的推移，人们一直在努力开发非侵入性诊断和分期方法，以取代肝活检的使用。所使用的非侵入性方法包括测量肝脏硬度的成像技术和生物标志物，重点是血清生物标志物。由于NAFLD病理生理学的复杂性令人印象深刻，生物标志物能够检测不同的相关过程，如细胞凋亡、纤维化和炎症，甚至能够涉及遗传背景和“组学”技术。本文不仅回顾了目前已验证的用于研究NAFLD的非侵入性方法，还回顾了关于最近发现的生物标志物的有前景的结果，包括生物标志物组合以及目前已验证的评估方法和血清标志物的联合应用。
