• Luciana Costa-Silva, Silvia Marinho Ferolla, Agnaldo Soares Lima, Paula Vieira Teixeira Vidigal, and Teresa Cristina de Abreu Ferrari.
• Departmento de Anatomia e Imagem, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Av. Professor Alfredo Balena 190, 30130-100, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil; Instituto Hermes Pardini, Rua dos Aimorés 66, 30140-070, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Electronic address: costaluciana@ufmg.br.
• Eur J Radiol. 2018 Jan 1; 98: 82-89.

ObjectivesTo evaluate the performance of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) in diagnosing and staging hepatic fibrosis in patients with histologically confirmed nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and in distinguishing simple steatosis from nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).MethodsNinety subjects (49 NAFLD patients and 41 healthy volunteers) were prospectively enrolled. Liver stiffness measured by MRE was correlated with the grade of fibrosis and/or inflammation determined by liver biopsy. Correlations, ROC (receiver operator characteristic) curves and diagnostic performance were evaluated. The study was approved by the local ethics committee.ResultsThe area under the ROC curve (AUROC) of MRE in discriminating healthy from NAFLD individuals was 0.964 (P<0.0001), and that for distinguishing advanced (F3-F4) from absent/mild fibrosis (F0-F2) was 0.928 (P<0.0001). The use of a threshold >4.39 kPa resulted in a sensitivity of 90.9% and a specificity of 97.3% for diagnosing advanced fibrosis. For discriminating NASH from simple steatosis, the AUROC was 0.783 (P<0.0001), and the threshold, 3.22 kPa.ConclusionsMRE is an effective, non-invasive method for detecting/staging hepatic fibrosis in NAFLD. This method has good performance in discriminating normal from NAFLD subjects and between the extreme grades of fibrosis. NAFLD patients with inflammation and without fibrosis have higher liver stiffness than those with simple steatosis.Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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