Liver Disease research at NUH

Liver disease is now the third leading cause of premature death, and Nottingham is internationally known for its longstanding and pioneering research portfolio in the area, including:

 

  • Alcoholic liver disease (or Alcoholic Hepatitis - accounts for a majority of decompensated cirrhosis in patients who are hospitalised. Chronic alcohol intake results in damage to the liver and can progress from simple steatosis (fatty liver), through stages of steatohepatitis, followed by fibrosis and then cirrhosis to hepatic failure.

 

  • Drug-induced liver injury - a rare, yet serious adverse reaction to medications and our research has developed well characterised cohorts of patient cases and healthy controls to investigate the genetic, epigenetics and environmental factors involved.

 

  • Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease - building on the Nottingham Molecular Pathology Node (NMPN), a joint venture between GI&Liver, Respiratory and the Advanced Data Analytic Centre, we have harnessed our computational and molecular pathology pipelines to transform multiplatform biomarker testing into clinical decision making tools in metabolic liver diseases (alcohol related and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: ArLD and NAFLD).

 

Featured study

Boehringer Ingelheim weight loss and liver health study

 

How will this study help patients?

Being overweight is the biggest risk factor for fatty liver disease, and we're studying a new drug from the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, which will help keep people's weight down. We want to find out more about how it works over the longer term and whether it could be part of normal treatment for people with NASH.

If you've been diagnosed with fatty liver disease and fibrosis, you're in the UK and between 18 and 80 years old and have a BMI of 25 or more, and weigh more than 70kg, you may be eligible to take part.

 

For more information

The principal investigator at Nottingham for this study is Professor Stephen Ryder. For more information, email  HEPGASTRORESEARCH@nuh.nhs.uk quoting 1404-0043 NASH BI