Table 1.
Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics.
Fig 1.
Differential hepatic gene expression in NAFLD progression.
Heat map representing color-coded expression levels of differentially expressed genes (FDR<0.01, p<0.01) for each individual sample across the three cohorts (normal, NAS ≤3, and NAS ≥5). A total of 211 genes are included in the heatmap. Z-score transformation was performed with Euclidean distance metric and average expression linkage for bottom-up hierarchical agglomerative clustering using nSolver® Analysis Software v2.6. Red indicates increased relative expression and green decreased relative expression.
Fig 2.
Representative transcriptional differences show stepwise increases across study groups.
Individual hepatic gene expression read count comparison in normal (n = 21), NAS ≤3 (n = 23), and NAS ≥5 (n = 18) cohorts. Differences in gene expression across groups was analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA with subsequent Dunn’s multiple comparison’s test for pairwise analysis. (* = p<0.05; ** = p<0.01, *** = p<0.001, **** = p<0.0001).
Table 2.
Top 15 genes differentially expressed between NAS ≥5 and NAS ≤3 cohorts.
Fig 3.
Plasma levels of osteopontin (SPP1) and several chemokines in normal control subjects (n = 14) and patients with NAFLD (n = 67).
P < 0.0001 comparing normal to NAFLD groups for OPN and CXCL10.
Fig 4.
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for plasma OPN and CXCL10 levels demonstrate diagnostic accuracy in the prediction of NAFLD.
The model has been adjusted for both age and sex.