Sterling honored as “liver health hero” by American Liver Foundation
Richard Sterling, M.D., chief of hepatology for VCU Health and chief clinical officer of the Institute, will be honored on Oct. 5 as a “liver health hero” by the American Liver Foundation.
VCU employees and others are walking in the foundation’s “Liver Life Walk” on Oct. 5 in Richmond to raise funds for research. Jazmine Edwards, the ALF’s national coordinator of events, said the recognition celebrates his “extraordinary contributions to liver health” with his Fibrosis-4 index.
Developed nearly 20 years ago by Sterling, the Fib-4 is a simple, non-invasive test involving a blood sample and incorporates measurements such as a patient’s age, liver enzymes and platelet count to judge the severity of a patient’s liver disease. He crafted the index while pursuing a graduate degree in biostatistics, alongside his clinical work.
The Fib-4 index’s impact on the field has been remarkable. The index is now considered the gold standard worldwide as the initial screening test for most liver diseases. The FIB-4 remains recommended by leading liver, gastroenterology and endocrinology societies as a first-line test to screen for liver scarring. For researchers seeking to propose new tests and biomarkers for liver disease, matching or besting the Fib-4’s predictive powers is the goal.
The index remains a source of research interest. Just this year, scientist around the globe have published almost 50 articles with the phrase “fibrosis-4” in the title about the index’s relationship to topics as diverse as hearing loss, health care utilization, cardiology health, endometrial cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, gallstones and psoriasis. Sterling’s paper proposing the index, “Development of a simple noninvasive index to predict significant fibrosis in patients with HIV/HCV coinfection,” published by the journal Hepatology, has been cited more than 75,200 times by other authors.