UToledo <a href="https://healthylife7.com/low-fat-vegan-diet-may-help-people-lose-weight-without-eating-less-say-researchers/” title=”Low-fat vegan diet may help people lose weight without eating less, say researchers”>Researchers Develop Blood Test Targeting Overlooked Marker of Liver Disease | UToledo News
UToledo Researchers Develop Blood Test Targeting Overlooked Marker of Liver Disease
August 18, 2026 | News,
UToday,
Alumni,
UToledo Health,
Medicine and Life SciencesBy Jon Monk
Liver disease often progresses silently until it has become a serious condition. Researchers at The University of Toledo have found a way to identify one of its earliest warning signs before symptoms appear
UToledo researchers Dr. Matam Vijay-Kumar, pictured, and Dr. Sadhana Kumari have developed a simple blood screening method that could identify an often-overlooked marker linked to liver disease before conventional testing
According to The University of Toledo researchers Drs. Matam Vijay-Kumar and Sadhana Kumari, a standard blood panel measures cholesterol, bilirubin and triglycerides, but not bile acids. That omission may be costing patients with undiagnosed liver disease the window of time when intervention matters most because elevated bile acids are among the earliest biological signs that liver function may be impaired
“Bile acids are a very neglected analyte in the clinics,” said Vijay-Kumar, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at UToledo’s College of Medicine and Life Sciences. “What we are proposing is that bile acids should be measured in clinics during annual checkups, at least.”
Bile acids are compounds produced by the liver that aid in digestion and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. Under normal conditions, they circulate between the liver and intestine and remain out of the bloodstream. When liver function is impaired or bile flow to the gallbladder becomes blocked, bile spills over from the liver and accumulates in the blood in a condition known as cholemia
The challenge is that elevated bile acids in the early stages of liver dysfunction are asymptomatic and silent, leaving liver conditions to progress unnoticed until conventional markers such as bilirubin and enzymes associated with liver injury finally catch up
Because routine bloodwork doesn’t measure bile acids, early cholemia often goes undetected. By the time liver disease announces itself through standard bloodwork, the underlying problem has often been quietly progressing for a while
Vijay-Kumar’s research, recently published in the American Journal of Physiology — Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology , proposes a way to close that gap after surprising test results
Because bile acids interact with lipids in the cell membranes, researchers expected red blood cells to become more fragile. Instead, they found the opposite
Red blood cells from mice with elevated bile acids were significantly more resistant to rupturing than cells from healthy mice with normal levels of bile acids. The finding held across multiple genetic mouse models of spontaneous cholemia and, importantly, in human patients as well
Blood samples from 23 patients with cholestatic liver disease treated at the University of Toledo Medical Center showed the same pattern. In collaboration with Dr. Thomas Sodeman, a gastroenterologist with UToledo Health, researchers compared those samples with blood from 23 age- and gender-matched individuals without signs of liver disease
Researchers found that elevated bile acid exposure causes the membrane to accumulate more cholesterol while losing the major lipid, phospholipid, altering the ratio between the two in a way that makes the membrane more rigid. That rigidity makes the cells resistant to osmotic stress in ways that can be detected with a simple test
“It is a very striking result,” Vijay-Kumar said. “We can identify people with high bile acids with high accuracy. When they have a blood glucose test, an additional four microliters of blood can be collected, put into solution, and within 10 to 20 minutes they will get the answer.”
The screening method consistently distinguished liver disease patients with elevated bile acids from non-liver disease patients. The implications extend well beyond general liver screening. Vijay-Kumar points to some pregnant women as a population with particularly urgent need for this kind of early detection
“Pregnant women should be monitored carefully,” he said. “Once it crosses 40 micromolar as in intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), the bile acids can cause severe damage to the fetus — they may have to induce premature birth, or even risk stillbirth. This red blood cell lysis test would be very important in the clinics.” More importantly, in 25 different clinical conditions including drug-induced liver injury (DILI), bile acids in the blood are elevated in humans but not considered for diagnosis.
The UToledo Technology Transfer Office has filed a patent application: “Rapid Screening for Elevated Bile Acids Using Whole Blood,” application number 18844313, for the diagnostic concept underlying the test
The researchers frame the broader clinical significance in direct terms, with the elevated bile acids as a possible first indicator when the liver is under stress, arriving before the more obvious markers physicians currently rely on
“The majority of liver diseases are associated with elevated bile acids,” said Dr. Sadhana Kumari, a research assistant in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and the co-first author of the publication along with Vijay-Kumar. “This first-line screening is very critical.”
A positive result would not diagnose liver disease. Instead, it would signal that additional evaluation is needed while treatment options may still be most effective. At minimum, early detection could prompt dietary changes or closer monitoring. At best, it could catch liver disease, dysfunction or injury
