Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Jan 27, 2024; 16(1): 12-16
Published online Jan 27, 2024. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v16.i1.12
Metabolomics in liver diseases: A novel alternative for liver biopsy?
Yasuo Tanaka
Yasuo Tanaka, Department of Gastroenterology, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo 162-8655, Japan
Author contributions: Tanaka Y contributed to the writing, and editing the manuscript, and review of literature.
Supported by JSPS KAKENHI, No. JP21K07906.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yasuo Tanaka, MD, PhD, Chief Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, 1-21-1 Toyama, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8655, Japan. ytanaka@hosp.ncgm.go.jp
Received: November 9, 2023
Peer-review started: November 9, 2023
First decision: November 27, 2023
Revised: December 5, 2023
Accepted: December 19, 2023
Article in press: December 19, 2024
Published online: January 27, 2024
Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) remains a significant public health problem as it can cause acute and chronic hepatitis. Chronic HCV infection is a major cause of liver fibrosis, and evaluation of liver fibrosis is essential because the prognosis of patients with chronic HCV infection is closely related to the stage of fibrosis. Liver fibrosis is traditionally evaluated based on pathological analysis of biopsy specimens, which is considered the gold standard. Nevertheless, liver biopsy is invasive and susceptible to sampling error and inter- and intraobserver variation in pathological interpretation; it is also costly. Therefore, noninvasive diagnostic investigations have been developed, including the use of fibrotic markers, scoring systems based on routine blood tests, and transient elastography with magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasonography. Recently, metabolomics, an emerging technology, has been used to detect the fibrosis stage. In this editorial, I comment on the article titled “Metabolomics in chronic hepatitis C: Decoding fibrosis grading and underlying pathways” by Ferrasi et al published in the recent issue of the World Journal of Hepatology. I discuss previous studies on the use of metabolome analysis for the diagnosis of HCV-related liver fibrosis and the potential development of biopsy-free diagnostic techniques.

Keywords: Metabolomics, Hepatitis C virus, Liver fibrosis, Liver cirrhosis, Serum biomarker

Core Tip: Metabolomics, a rapidly emerging technology, offers a non-invasive alternative to conventional blood tests and transient elastography with magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasonography for fibrosis staging. I consider the article titled “Metabolomics in chronic hepatitis C: Decoding fibrosis grading and underlying pathways” by Ferrasi et al, published in the latest issue of the World J Hepatol. I review prior studies concerning the role of metabolomics in diagnosing hepatitis C virus-related liver fibrosis and establishing a foundation for non-invasive diagnostic techniques.