Research Article Serum Oxidative Stress Markers and Lipidomic Profile to Detect NASH Patients Responsive to an Antioxidant Treatment: A Pilot Study

Copyright © 2014 Paola Stiuso et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Liver steatosis can evolve to steatohepatitis (NASH) through a series of biochemical steps related to oxidative stress in hepatocytes. Antioxidants, such as silybin, have been proposed as a treatment of patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and NASH. In this study, we evaluated, in patients with histologically documented NASH, the oxidant/antioxidant status and lipid “fingerprint ” in the serum of NASH patients, both in basal conditions and after 12 months of treatment with silybin-based food integrator Realsil (RA).The oxidant/antioxidant status analysis showed the presence of a group of patients with higher basal severity of disease (NAS scores 4.67 ± 2.5) and a second group corresponding to borderline NASH (NAS scores = 3.8 ± 1.5). The chronic treatment with RA changed the NAS score in both groups that reached the statistical significance only in group 2, in which there was also a significant decrease of serum lipid peroxidation. The lipidomic profile showed a lipid composition similar to that o