Serologic test for neonatal hemochromatosis in infants with acute liver failure

描述(由申请人提供)：本申请涉及广泛的挑战领域(04)临床研究和特殊挑战04-DK-104改进肝脏疾病的诊断、分期和治疗。这项申请特别寻求开发一种方法，以提高对婴儿急性肝功能衰竭的诊断，显著改善药物治疗的结果，并减少儿童患者肝移植的使用率。新生儿血色沉着症(NH)是大多数新生儿肝功能衰竭的主要诊断原因。然而，高达40%的婴儿无法确诊为急性肝功能衰竭。这项应用的总体目标是确定NH作为90天龄婴儿急性肝功能衰竭的一个原因的真实流行率。在确定其作为急性肝功能衰竭原因的重要性之前，科学知识中需要克服的关键差距是缺乏一种敏感和特异的NH诊断生物标志物。由于NH是由母体对胎肝的同种异体免疫引起的，因此提出的生物标志物是母亲或婴儿血清中存在“抗胎肝细胞抗体”。这一生物标志物的免疫荧光分析的诊断价值将被建立，然后它将被用于评估急性肝功能衰竭的婴幼儿人群中NH的患病率。正常情况下，获得足够大的研究人群来支持这样的研究需要多年的研究。然而，从儿科急性肝功能衰竭研究库获得的血清将被使用，从而使在两年的时间框架内完成拟议工作是可行的。预期的结果将显示，在婴幼儿急性肝功能衰竭的所有原因中，NH足足占50%。这一发现将产生重大的积极影响，因为NH对特定的药物治疗有反应，这种药物治疗比目前的治疗(包括肝移植)改善了结果。此外，如果这项分析中使用的新测试被证明对诊断是敏感和特异的，它可以取代目前的诊断方法，并在这种情况下预期提高诊断准确性。因此，早期、准确的诊断可能会改善预后，减少肝移植的使用率。 公共卫生相关性：新生儿血色素沉着症(NH)是婴儿肝功能衰竭的重要原因，但很容易被漏诊。一种新的血清学测试将被用来确定NH是否是近40%的未经诊断的儿童急性肝功能衰竭的原因。由于NH对医疗很敏感，提高对急性肝功能衰竭的诊断可以挽救许多婴儿的生命，并大大减少儿童肝移植的需要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application addresses broad Challenge Area (04) Clinical Research and specific Challenge 04-DK-104 Improve the diagnosis, staging and treatment of diseases of the liver. This application specifically seeks to develop an approach that will improve the diagnosis of acute liver failure in infants, result in significantly improved outcome with medical therapy, and reduce the utilization of liver transplantation in pediatric patients. Neonatal hemochromatosis (NH) is the leading diagnosed cause of liver failure in neonates in most series. However, no diagnosis for acute liver failure can be established in up to 40% of infants. The overall objective of this application is to determine the true prevalence of NH as a cause of acute liver failure in infants d 90 days of age. The critical gap in scientific knowledge to be overcome before its importance as cause of acute liver failure can be determined is the lack of a sensitive and specific diagnostic biomarker for NH. Since NH is caused by maternal alloimmunity against fetal liver, the biomarker proposed is the presence of "anti-fetal hepatocyte IgG antibody" in mothers' or infants' serum. The diagnostic utility of an immunofluorescence assay for this biomarker is to be established and then it will be used to assess the prevalence of NH in a population of young infants with acute liver failure. Normally acquiring a study population large enough to power such a study would require many years of study. However, sera obtained from the Pediatric Acute Liver Failure study repository will be used, making it feasible to complete the proposed work within the timeframe of two years. The expected results will show that NH constitutes fully 50% of all causes of acute liver failure in young infants. This finding will have a significant positive impact because NH is responsive to specific medical therapy, which improves outcome over current treatment including liver transplantation. Furthermore, should the novel test used in this analysis prove to be sensitive and specific for the diagnosis, it could replace current diagnostic approaches and prospectively improve diagnostic accuracy in this setting. Thus, early, precise diagnosis could lead to improved outcome and reduced utilization of liver transplantation. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Neonatal Hemochromatosis (NH) is an important cause of liver failure in infants, but the diagnosis may be easily missed. A novel serological test will be used to determine if NH is the cause of the nearly 40% of pediatric acute liver failure without diagnosis. Since NH is responsive to medical treatment, improving the diagnosis of acute liver failure could save the lives of many infants and substantially reduce the need for liver transplantation in children.