Improved diagnostics and prognostication of chronic liver disease

Chronic liver disease is a heterogeneous disorder and a common cause of morbidity and mortality.

The common thing is that these diseases progress over long periods and then give few or no symptoms, except in the late stages when cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma manifests and prognosis is dismal. Only around 20% of patients with chronic liver disease will develop cirrhosis. Early identification and treatment are associated with an excellent prognosis.

Therefore, the issue is to correctly identify pre-cirrhotic disease to initiate treatment and accurately predict which patients will have a benign disease course.Here, we will perform several large, population-based studies to improve diagnostics and prognostication of chronic liver disease in several populations.

Using a primary care population of >400.000 persons, we aim to develop statistical models that can accurately predict which persons that have a high risk for future severe liver disease.

Additionally, we will evaluate a new screening protocol to detect pre-cirrhotic liver disease in 1000 patients with T2D.

A national population-based cohort study will evaluate the prognostic performance of a commonly used ultrasound-based tool used for diagnostics of liver disease.

Finally, a population-based cohort consisting of all patients diagnosed with chronic liver disease in Sweden will be constructed and form the foundation for a large number of important observational studies in the field.