Berkeley Scientific Journal

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is projected to be the most common cause of liver failure in the coming decade and is a very common reason for liver transplantation. One measure of its severity is the level of hepatic fibrosis, traditionally assessed by a liver biopsy. The non-alcoholic fatty liver disease fibrosis score was developed to non-invasively predict the degree of fibrosis using patient characteristics and laboratory values. We hypothesized that this score could also be used to assess the quality of donated livers, since many donors are obese and thus have a higher risk of fatty liver disease. Using data from the United Network for Organ Sharing over two decades, this study tests whether graft failure is associated with the donor liver’s non-alcoholic fatty liver disease fibrosis score. Statistical analysis yielded that the relationship between the score and time till graft failure is insignificant: A chi-square test of independence between the two gives a p-value of .1311, and a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis yielded a p-value of .2, neither of which were under the significance level of .05. Though the results were not statistically significant, future studies on non-invasive assessments and their use may illuminate possibilities for clinical applications.