; and the members of the UK-PBC Consortium*The biochemical response to ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA)-so-called "treatment response"-strongly predicts long-term outcome in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). Several long-term prognostic models based solely on the treatment response have been developed that are widely used to risk stratify PBC patients and guide their management. However, they do not take other prognostic variables into account, such as the stage of the liver disease. We sought to improve existing long-term prognostic models of PBC using data from the UK-PBC Research Cohort. We performed Cox's proportional hazards regression analysis of diverse explanatory variables in a derivation cohort of 1,916 UDCA-treated participants. We used nonautomatic backward selection to derive the best-fitting Cox model, from which we derived a multivariable fractional polynomial model. We combined linear predictors and baseline survivor functions in equations to score the risk of a liver transplant or liver-related death occurring within 5, 10, or 15 years. We validated these risk scores in an independent cohort of 1,249 UDCA-treated participants. The best-fitting model consisted of the baseline albumin and platelet count, as well as the bilirubin, transaminases, and alkaline phosphatase, after 12 months of UDCA. In the validation cohort, the 5-, 10-, and 15-year risk scores were highly accurate (areas under the curve: >0.90). Conclusions: The prognosis of PBC patients can be accurately evaluated using the UK-PBC risk scores. They may be used to identify high-risk patients for closer monitoring and second-line therapies, as well as low-risk patients who could potentially be followed up in primary care. (HEPATOLOGY 2016;63:930-950) SEE EDITORIAL ON PAGE 697 P rimary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a chronic liver disease in which autoimmune destruction of the intrahepatic bile ducts results in cholestasis and progressive fibrosis.(1) Biliary injury may eventually lead to cirrhosis and liver failure-but the rate of disease progression is variable.(2) Across the spectrum, some patients with PBC progress to end-stage liver disease (ESLD) within a few years of diagnosis; some develop cirrhosis that remains well compensated; others (perhaps the majority) do not even develop cirrhosis. In PBC, as in other conditions, accurate prognostication enables management of the disease to be tailored to the patient. This is the basis of precision medicine-and it has clear benefits: patients at higherAbbreviations: AIH, autoimmune hepatitis; ALP, alkaline phosphatase; ALP12, alkaline phosphatase after 12 months of UDCA; AMA, anti-mitochondrial antibody; ANA, anti-nuclear antibodies; ALT, alanine aminotransferase; ALT12, ALT after 12 months of UDCA; AST, aspartate transaminase; AST12, AST after 12 months of UDCA; AUC, area under receiver operating characteristic curve; BIL, bilirubin; BIL12, bilirubin after 12 months of UDCA; CI, confidence interval; CRFs, case record forms; EASL, European Association for the Study of Liver; ESLD, end-stag...

,4 and the UK-PBC Consortium Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) has a complex clinical phenotype, with debate about the extent and specificity of frequently described systemic symptoms such as fatigue. The aim of this study was to use a national patient cohort of 2,353 patients recruited from all clinical centers in the UK to explore the impact of disease on perceived life quality. Clinical data regarding diagnosis, therapy, and biochemical status were collected and have been reported previously. Detailed symptom phenotyping using recognized and validated symptom assessment tools including the PBC-40 was also undertaken and is reported here. Perception of poor quality of life and impaired health status was common in PBC patients (35% and 46%, respectively) and more common than in an age-matched and sex-matched community control group (6% and 15%, P < 0.0001 for both). Fatigue and symptoms of social dysfunction were associated with impaired perceived quality of life using multivariate analysis. Fatigue was the symptom with the greatest impact. Depression was a significant factor, but appeared to be a manifestation of complex symptom burden rather than a primary event. Fatigue had its greatest impact on perceived quality of life when accompanied by symptoms of social dysfunction, suggesting that maintenance of social networks is critical for minimizing the impact of fatigue. Conclusion: The symptom burden in PBC, which is unrelated to disease severity or ursodeoxycholic acid response, is significant and complex and results in significant quality of life deficit. The complexity of symptom burden, and its lack of relation to disease severity and treatment response, suggest that specific approaches to symptom management are warranted that address both symptom biology and social impact. (HEPATOLOGY 2013;58:273-283)

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a classical autoimmune liver disease for which effective immunomodulatory therapy is lacking. Here we perform meta-analyses of discovery datasets from genome-wide association studies of European subjects (n=2,764 cases and 10,475 controls) followed by validation genotyping in an independent cohort (n=3,716 cases and 4261 controls). We discover and validate six previously unknown risk loci for PBC (Pcombined<5×10−8) and used pathway analysis to identify JAK-STAT/IL12/IL27 signaling and cytokine-cytokine pathways, for which relevant therapies exist.

We genotyped 2,861 cases from the UK PBC consortium and 8,514 UK population controls across 196,524 variants within 186 known autoimmune risk loci. We identified three loci newly associated with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) (with P<5×10−8), increasing the number of known susceptibility loci to 25. The most associated variant at 19p12 is a low-frequency non-synonymous SNP in TYK2, further implicating JAK/STAT and cytokine signalling in disease pathogenesis. A further five loci contained non-synonymous variants in high linkage disequilibrium (LD) (r2>0.8) with the most associated variant at the locus. We found multiple independent common, low-frequency and rare variant association signals at five loci. Of the 26 independent non-HLA signals tagged on Immunochip, 15 have SNPs in B-lymphoblastoid open-chromatin regions in high LD (r2>0.8) with the most associated variant. This study demonstrates how dense fine-mapping arrays coupled with functional genomic data can be utilized to identify candidate causal variants for functional follow-up.

BackgroundT1 mapping and extracellular volume (ECV) have the potential to guide patient care and serve as surrogate end-points in clinical trials, but measurements differ between cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) scanners and pulse sequences. To help deliver T1 mapping to global clinical care, we developed a phantom-based quality assurance (QA) system for verification of measurement stability over time at individual sites, with further aims of generalization of results across sites, vendor systems, software versions and imaging sequences. We thus created T1MES: The T1 Mapping and ECV Standardization Program.MethodsA design collaboration consisting of a specialist MRI small-medium enterprise, clinicians, physicists and national metrology institutes was formed. A phantom was designed covering clinically relevant ranges of T1 and T2 in blood and myocardium, pre and post-contrast, for 1.5 T and 3 T. Reproducible mass manufacture was established. The device received regulatory clearance by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Conformité Européene (CE) marking.ResultsThe T1MES phantom is an agarose gel-based phantom using nickel chloride as the paramagnetic relaxation modifier. It was reproducibly specified and mass-produced with a rigorously repeatable process. Each phantom contains nine differently-doped agarose gel tubes embedded in a gel/beads matrix. Phantoms were free of air bubbles and susceptibility artifacts at both field strengths and T1 maps were free from off-resonance artifacts. The incorporation of high-density polyethylene beads in the main gel fill was effective at flattening the B1 field. T1 and T2 values measured in T1MES showed coefficients of variation of 1 % or less between repeat scans indicating good short-term reproducibility. Temperature dependency experiments confirmed that over the range 15–30 °C the short-T1 tubes were more stable with temperature than the long-T1 tubes. A batch of 69 phantoms was mass-produced with random sampling of ten of these showing coefficients of variations for T1 of 0.64 ± 0.45 % and 0.49 ± 0.34 % at 1.5 T and 3 T respectively.ConclusionThe T1MES program has developed a T1 mapping phantom to CE/FDA manufacturing standards. An initial 69 phantoms with a multi-vendor user manual are now being scanned fortnightly in centers worldwide. Future results will explore T1 mapping sequences, platform performance, stability and the potential for standardization.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12968-016-0280-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.