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Serum Biomarkers for Evaluating Portal Hypertension

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Biomarkers in Liver Disease

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Abstract

Cirrhosis represents the final stage for wide variety of chronic liver diseases, regardless of its etiology, and the development of portal hypertension is responsible for the pathogenesis of most frequent and fatal complications of cirrhosis. It is of most importance to evaluate patients newly diagnosed with cirrhosis for the presence of clinically significant portal hypertension and associated complications, which could expose the patient to fatal conditions such as variceal bleeding. The most accurate method for evaluating the presence and severity of portal hypertension is the measurement of the hepatic venous pressure gradient, which on one hand provides us valuable prognostic information but on the other hand represents a problematic technique, because it is invasive, costly, and not available in all centers. Several alternative noninvasive techniques have been proposed to assess portal hypertension, including serum biomarkers and imaging techniques. Various serum molecules have been investigated for their ability to predict the presence of portal hypertension, some of which have showed to either correlate with the hepatic venous pressure gradient or predict clinically significant portal hypertension. This chapter will focus on the potential role of multiple serum markers of portal hypertension that could be clinically applied to predict the presence of clinically significant portal hypertension, to stratify patients with respect to the severity of portal hypertension, to predict lethal complications such as variceal bleeding, and to monitor disease progression or treatment response without exposing patients to the risks of repeated invasive assessment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine A, Galilee Medical Center, Nahariya, Israel

    Saad Elias & Assy Nimer

  2. Bar Ilan University, Safed, Israel

    Saad Elias, Barhoum Masad & Assy Nimer

  3. Galilee Medical Center, Nahariya, Israel

    Barhoum Masad

Authors
  1. Saad Elias
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  2. Barhoum Masad
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  3. Assy Nimer
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Correspondence to Saad Elias or Assy Nimer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom

    Vinood B. Patel

  2. Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences Research Division, Faculty of Life Science and Medicine, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Victor R. Preedy

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Elias, S., Masad, B., Nimer, A. (2017). Serum Biomarkers for Evaluating Portal Hypertension. In: Patel, V., Preedy, V. (eds) Biomarkers in Liver Disease. Biomarkers in Disease: Methods, Discoveries and Applications. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7675-3_33

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