The LiverScreen Project

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  The LiverScreen Project: A population-based study to detect liver fibrosis

• IRAS ID

  259698

• Contact name

  Pere Gines

• Contact email

  pgines@clinic.cat

• Sponsor organisation

  Fundacio Clinic per a la Recerca Biomedica (FCRB)

• Duration of Study in the UK

  5 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  The main purpose of this study is to assess the prevalence of liver fibrosis in the general population using FibroScan®, which is a simple and widely available non-invasive method that measures liver stiffness measurement to identify liver fibrosis.
  Liver cirrhosis (advanced liver scarring) is the end-stage of all causes of chronic liver diseases. It is on the rise as are the number of liver disease-related deaths.
  Chronic liver injury causes inflammation & fibrosis and the accumulation of fibrosis over a period of 2-3 decades leads to cirrhosis.
  Most liver disease is preventable and reversible when diagnosed early. In general, patients are not diagnosed early enough because the disease shows no symptoms until the late stages, so patients don’t seek medical attention until much later in the disease process.
  Current strategies for diagnosing liver disease, using liver function blood tests (LFT's), are not accurate methods to detect fibrosis and there are no other strategies for early detection of cirrhosis.
  In recent years, a new non-invasive method assessing the presence and severity of liver fibrosis, has been developed; FibroScan®. This method relies on liver stiffness measurement. FibroScan® is a widely available, painless, point-of-care technique performed in 5-10 minutes without need for sedation. This technique thus seems particularly suited for the early detection of chronic liver diseases.
  We have designed this clinical research study to investigate if FibroScan® is useful as a screening method for liver fibrosis detection in the general population

• REC name

  East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  19/EM/0273

• Date of REC Opinion

  18 Nov 2019

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion