Researchers found that a blood test can identify patients with an increased buildup of fat in the liver, which can cause health problems. Harvard Public Health spoke with Anat Yaskolka Meir, an epidemiology postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, about her research group’s recent publication.
Why did you want to study this topic?
Fatty liver disease is asymptomatic. However, if it’s not treated it is associated with other diseases like Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and it can also progress to more severe liver diseases like cirrhosis and liver cancer. But we wanted to know if we could diagnose people with fatty liver disease based on proteins that circulate in the blood.
What were the main findings of your study?
We found that we can predict what is happening in the liver using a specialized blood test looking at blood proteins called proteomic signatures. We also saw how different diets affected these proteins, and that a “green” Mediterranean diet led to favorable protein changes.
What would you like to see happen in the real world based on the results of your study?
In the future, I hope we can use proteomics as predictors of disease, and for patient monitoring. Right now, these technologies are very expensive. But maybe in the future, you can go in for a simple blood test and they can tell you if it’s likely you have fatty liver, even if you are asymptomatic.
—Leah Rosenbaum
(Study in Hepatology, March 2024)
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