Reversibility of Liver Fibrosis

On the third day of APASL, Professor Teerha Piratvisuth presented a lecture on reversibility of liver fibrosis. He said that evidence of fibrotic or cirrhotic regression in humans had been reported in chronic liver diseases of different etiologies, including viral hepatitis. Improvement in liver fibrosis after long-term anti-HBV treatment has been shown in many studies which have paired liver biopsy. Serpaggi et al. reported disappearance of cirrhosis, defined as a decrease of 2 or greater in METAVIR fibrosis score in 14 (12.4%) of the 113 cirrhotic patients who received specific therapy. Poynard also confirmed the reversal of cirrhosis in 75 (49%) of 153 chronic hepatitis C patients who were treated with peginterferon with or without ribavirin.

Moreover, he mentioned that non-invasive methods for evaluation of liver fibrosis, such as Fibrotest, Fibroscan etc, might be useful for monitoring fibrosis regression. However, study to validate the use of these non-invasive methods is essential before applying them.