MASLD

Percent total body weight loss expresses change in weight as a fraction of starting weight. It is the standard way to monitor and report response to obesity treatment, including GLP-1 and dual incretin therapies. A loss of 5% or more is generally considered clinically meaningful, with greater benefit at 10% and 15% or more. It is a monitoring metric, not a diagnosis.

A non-invasive index using AST (relative to its upper limit of normal) and platelet count to estimate liver fibrosis. WHO hepatitis B guidance uses APRI greater than 2 to identify cirrhosis in adults in resource-limited settings; lower cutoffs (around 0.5 and 1.5) are used to rule out or rule in significant fibrosis, with the usual sensitivity and specificity trade-offs.

BMI is weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared. It is a quick population screen for weight status, not a measure of body fat or health on its own. For people of South Asian and other Asian ancestry, risk rises at lower BMIs, so the lower WHO Asia-Pacific cut points are shown alongside the standard bands.

The Child-Pugh score grades cirrhosis severity from five variables (bilirubin, albumin, INR, ascites, and encephalopathy), each scored 1 to 3. The total of 5 to 15 maps to Class A, B, or C, which correlates with survival and surgical risk and is still widely used in hepatology.

A non-invasive index combining age, AST, ALT, and platelet count to estimate the likelihood of advanced hepatic fibrosis, widely used as the first step in triaging chronic liver disease before elastography or biopsy.

HOMA-IR is a simple fasting surrogate for insulin resistance derived by Matthews and colleagues in 1985. A healthy reference individual scores about 1; higher values suggest more insulin resistance. There is no single universal threshold: cutoffs vary with the insulin assay, population, age, and BMI, so the number is best read against your own laboratory's reference range and trended over time.

MELD-Na adds serum sodium to the classic MELD model (bilirubin, INR, creatinine), capturing the prognostic weight of hyponatraemia in cirrhosis. It estimates 90-day mortality and was used by OPTN for liver allocation from 2016 until MELD 3.0 superseded it.