Research Encourages Blood Test for Primary Biliary Cirrhosis Liver Disease

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have discovered what could lead to lead to better testing for primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) before the disease causes irreversible liver disease and damage. They have found that parents, siblings and children of PBC patients are likely to have the biomarker for the disease in their blood, and therefore these first degree relatives of a patient can be tested by a fast and simple blood test.

PBC is a disease that strikes mostly women and nearly 50,000 people in North America have the disease. With PBC the bile ducts are slowly destroyed. This causes harmful substances to build up in the liver and this can cause irreversible scarring of the liver and eventually liver failure. The scariest thing about PBC is that almost half will have no symptoms during the early stages of the disease and will only be diagnosed following routine liver tests, that is if they have them. With the discovery of the biomarker, anyone who has a close relative with PBC can be tested before the serious symptoms appear.

They found that Anti-mitochondrial antibodies are the biomarker- a substance that relates with the risk of or the actual presence of a disease- for PBC. This is the largest study of it is kind and it tested for the anti-mitochondrial antibodies in 306 first degree relatives of adult PBC patients and 196 healthy participants.

In the first degree relatives group 13.1% had the biomarkers while in the healthy group it was 1%. The difference was even greater when they only took into consideration the women relatives, with the results being 20.7% for sisters, 15/1% for mothers and 9.8% for daughters.

Not everyone who tests positive for anti-mitochondrial antibodies will end up with PBC but a positive test does indicate that the person will be predisposed to develop the illness, especially if there is a family history of the disease.

Statically speaking one out of five sisters of a PBC can expect to have has anti-mitochondrial antibodies. With that percentage, it is well worth the time to take the test, especially for women over the age of 40