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Not yet recruitingNCT05473403PRO-SURFASAUpdated Mar 13, 2024

Validation of a Prognostic Score for Steroid Therapy Response in Acute Severe Autoimmune Hepatitis

An interventional study of Corticosteroid therapy in Liver Failure, Acute, Hepatitis, Autoimmune and Organ Dysfunction Scores, sponsored by Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris. Not yet recruiting at 26 sites in France. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 99 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2024-03-13.

Sponsored by Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris · Not applicable, Interventional, and Other

Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
150
Allocation
Non-randomized
Ages
18 Years to 99 Years
Sex
All
01

Study summary

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic liver disease, which is characterized by the increase of immunoglobulin G (IgG) level, the presence of auto-antibodies and a typical histology, in the absence of other liver disease.

Due to the heterogeneity of AIH manifestations, different scoring systems have been validated in order to make a reliable diagnosis. The two most recent scoring systems are: the revised International Autoimmune Hepatitis Group (IAIHG) criteria and the IAIHG simplified criteria. The second one is recommended by the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) clinical practice guidelines (CPGs).

The EASL clinical practice guidelines suggests that the treatment of ASAIH (Acute Severe AIH) is high doses of corticosteroids (superior to 1mg/kg/day) as early as possible and a lack of improvement within seven days should lead to listing for emergency liver transplantation (LT). However, the "lack of improvement" is not objectively defined and the grading of recommendation is III (Opinions of respected authorities).

The hypothesis of the study is that the previously developed decisional score on a retrospective series will prospectively allow the differentiation between patients with ASAIH (Acute Severe AIH) who respond to corticosteroid therapy and should be maintained on treatment and patients who do not respond and should be rapidly evaluated for LT. The score will be computed at day 3 since corticosteroid introduction.

Read the detailed description

All the interventions (blood samples, imagery examinations, visits, liver biopsy, corticosteroid therapy, liver transplantation) will be performed following the standard of care for ASAIH. The investigators of the participating centers will not change their standard management for the study protocol. The management will follow the recommendation of EASL CPGs.

The prognostic score will allow to distinguish between patient's responders and non-responders to corticosteroid therapy in ASAIH. This knowledge will avoid the prolonged duration of the corticosteroid therapy in patients for whom this therapy is futile or harmful and rapidly select the patients for LT. Of course considering that the created score is decisional whether a patient is a candidate for LT, a prospective validation is mandatory to use it as a clinical tool for the day-to-day practice. This is the first prospective study on ASAIH.

02

Conditions studied

  • Liver Failure, Acute
  • Hepatitis, Autoimmune
  • Organ Dysfunction Scores
  • Risk Factors

Keywords

  • Acute Severe AutoImmune Hepatitis (ASAIH)
  • Decisional score
  • Prognostic score
03

In context

Liver Failure, Acute

96 studies on the registry are indexed under Liver Failure, Acute; 20 are open to participants now.

This study's planned enrollment of 150 is above the median of 44 across 49 interventional studies indexed under Liver Failure, Acute.

Browse Liver Failure, Acute studies →

Lead sponsor

Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris is the lead sponsor of 3,592 studies on the registry; 1,033 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
18 Years to 99 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
No

Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.

Inclusion criteria

  • Age ≥ 18 years
  • Strong clinical suspicion of severe acute hepatitis defined by the presence of increased IgG and/or autoantibodies and/or histology characteristic of the disease in the absence of other causes of severe acute hepatitis.
  • (INR) ≥ 1.5
  • Informed, written consent
  • Patient having the rights to French social insurance

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Previous medical history of chronic liver disease including liver disease (AIH, Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC), Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) , alcoholic hepatitis etc.)
  • Other causes of acute severe hepatitis:

    • Hepatitis A Virus (HAV) hepatitis, defined by HAV Immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies
    • Virus (HBV) hepatitis, defined by HBs antigen and HBV IgM antibodies
    • Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) hepatitis, defined by HEV IgM antibodies or positive HEV-RNA in patients
    • Drug induced hepatitis, histologically proved or induced by well-known hepatotoxic substances
    • Acute hypoxemic hepatitis, context of shock, hypoxemia or heat shock
    • Budd-Chiari syndrome, diagnosed by imagery (Doppler ultrasound, CT scan)
    • Acute hepatitis in the context of a HELLP (Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes and a Low count) syndrome or acute fatty liver of pregnancy
  • Use of 1 month before inclusion
  • Pregnant or lactating woman
  • Curator or guardianship or patient placed under judicial protection
  • Participation in other interventional research during the study
Terms in these criteria, in plain language(6)

Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.

Autoimmune disease

A condition in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, type 1 diabetes or inflammatory bowel disease.

Immunotherapy studies often leave out active autoimmune disease, and some name exceptions, such as thyroid disease on replacement hormone. Check the exceptions this study lists.

INR, PT and aPTT (clotting tests)

Blood tests of how long blood takes to clot. The INR is the prothrombin time (PT) put on a common scale; about 1 is usual for someone not taking a blood thinner.

Criteria often make an exception for people on a blood thinner such as warfarin, whose INR is raised on purpose.

Hepatitis B tests

Hepatitis B is a virus that infects the liver. These are separate tests: HBsAg positive usually means a current infection (a recent vaccination can briefly cause it too); total anti-HBc (HBcAb) positive means an infection now or in the past; HBV DNA measures how much virus is in the blood.

Some studies accept a past infection if HBV DNA is undetectable, sometimes with antiviral medicine during the study. Check what this study allows.

Immunosuppression

A weakened immune system. It can come from an illness, such as HIV or some blood cancers, or from medicines that turn the immune system down, for example after an organ transplant or for an autoimmune disease; steroids at higher doses count.

Read whether the line is about a condition or about medicines, and which medicines and doses it means.

Platelets

Blood cells that help blood clot. Too few raises the risk of bleeding and bruising. A usual adult range is about 150–400 × 10⁹/L (150,000–400,000 per µL); each lab has its own reference range.

Corticosteroids (steroids)

Anti-inflammatory medicines such as prednisone, prednisolone and dexamethasone — not the anabolic steroids used for muscle.

Studies differ in what they allow: check which steroid medicines, routes (tablets, injections, creams, inhalers, eye drops) and doses this study accepts.

05

Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Other
Allocation
Non-randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
150 participants (estimated)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    Corticosteroid therapy

    Prednisone or Prednisolone or Methylprednisolone : Patient with ASAIH will be treated in oral or intravenous (IV) with high doses ( ≥ 1mg/kg/day) of corticosteroids (Prednisone or Prednisolone or Methylprednisolone) until relapse (confirmed by blood tests and clinical status) requiring an emergency Liver Transplantation (LT) or death.

    Other: Corticosteroid therapy

  • No intervention
    Patient without corticosteroid therapy

    Patient not treated will undergo to emergency Liver Transplantation (LT) or death.

Interventions

  • OtherCorticosteroid therapy

    Administration of high doses of corticosteroids as early as possible. Patient non-responder to treatment should lead to listing for emergency liver transplantation (LT).

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Prospectively validate the previously elaborated SURFASA-score, evaluating its ability to predict non-response outcome to corticosteroid therapy in a new population of patients with acute severe autoimmune hepatitis.

    Patient response within 90 days to corticosteroid therapy defined as: responders (alive without LT) or non-responders (dead or transplanted) within 90 days since corticosteroid therapy introduction.

    Time frame: Day 90

Secondary outcomes

  1. The association between infection occurrence and death during hospitalization

    Documented infections during hospitalization

    Time frame: participation period (treatment+follow-up): 12 months

  2. the management of infected ASAIH patients in usual practice

    Antibiotic therapy : doses

    Time frame: participation period (treatment+follow-up): 12 months

  3. The risk factors for early AIH flair after corticosteroid therapy response.

    The frequency of AIH flair

    Time frame: D90

  4. The risk factors for AIH recurrence after liver transplantation

    AIH recurrence

    Time frame: participation period (treatment+follow-up): 12 months

  5. The evolution of patients after LT

    Retransplantation, alive, death

    Time frame: participation period (treatment+follow-up): 12 months

  6. The evolution of patients not treated with corticosteroids but meeting the inclusion and non-inclusion criteria

    Retransplantation, alive, death

    Time frame: participation period (treatment+follow-up): 12 months

  7. The prognostic factors for survival in patients treated with corticosteroids who underwent or not LT

    quality of the graft, immunosuppression, rejection episode,

    Time frame: participation period (treatment+follow-up): 12 months

  8. The association of histological features (liver biopsy) with response to corticosteroids and survival at 90 days since admission

    Presence of centrilobular necrosis and inflammatory infiltration

    Time frame: 90 days

07

Study locations

26 sites
08

References and documents

Individual participant data

Plan to share: No

No publications or documents are linked to this record.

09

Timeline

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
ElapsedEstimatedEstimated, not yet reached

Start is estimated for Jun 2024; primary completion for May 2027, 35 months later.

How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.

Registered
Jun 7, 2022
First posted
Jul 25, 2022
StartEst.
Jun 1, 2024
Primary completionEst.
May 31, 2027
CompletionEst.
Jun 30, 2028
Last update
Mar 13, 2024
What these dates mean
Start.
When the first participant enrolled; while estimated, when the study expects to open to recruitment.
Primary completion.
When the last participant was examined or treated to collect data for the study's main question, its primary outcome. A study that stopped early gives the date its data collection stopped.
Completion.
When the last participant's last visit took place, for every outcome, secondary ones and side effects included: the end of the study. Often later than primary completion, sometimes the same day.
Actual and Est.
Actual means the registry says the date has happened. Est. (estimated) is a date the sponsor plans or expects. It can still move, and the sponsor is expected to change it to actual once it has passed.
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Mar 13, 2024, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
10

Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT05473403
Responsible party
Sponsor
First posted
Jul 25, 2022
Start date
Jun 1, 2024 (estimated)
Primary completion
May 31, 2027 (estimated)
Completion
Jun 30, 2028 (estimated)
Last update
Mar 13, 2024

Study contacts

Eleonora DE MARTIN, MD, PhD
Contact
eleonora.demartin@aphp.fr
33 (0)1.45.59.64.33
Jean-Charles DUCLOS-VALLEE, MD, PhD
Contact
jean-charles.duclos-vallee@aphp.fr
33 (0)1.45.59.64.28
Eleonora DE MARTIN, MD, PhD
principal investigator · Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris

Oversight

FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

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This study is not yet recruiting, as verified in Sep 2023. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.

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