Biography

Professor Guruprasad P. Aithal is the Professor of Hepatology and the Head of the Division for the Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre and Deputy Director of Nottingham Molecular Pathology Node.

Professor Aithal is the GI & Liver Disorder Theme Lead at the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, and was the Director of NIHR Nottingham Digestive Diseases BRU between 2008 & 2016.

He won the NHS Innovation Award (2013), Shire Award for Gastrointestinal Excellence (2015) and was BMJ Gastroenterology team finalist (2015).

Professor Aithal’s research interests include drug-induced liver injury, metabolic liver disease, hepatopancreaticobiliary imaging and epidemiology of liver and biliary disorders.

His landmark study on warfarin pharmacogenetics (Lancet 1999) catalysed the field, leading the US Food and Drug administration (FDA) to recommend (2007 & 2010) genetic testing during warfarin dosing and its wider application in practice. He also led an international expert panel to establish phenotypic standardisation in drug-induced liver injury (DILI) (Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2011). He co-chaired international DILI consortia (iDILIC) to conduct a seminal genome-wide association studies identifying key associations with key polymorphisms in HLA and other genes with DILI (Nat Genet. 2009, Gastroenterology 2017).

Professor Aithal contributed critically to the evaluation of the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis panel (Hepatology. 2008, Hepatology. 2013), the only non-invasive marker recommended for clinical use by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, UK in 2016. He also evaluated piogltazone (Gastroenterology. 2008) which has been recommended by NICE, European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in 2016. He was also involved in liraglutide (Lancet 2016) in phase II trial to demonstrate efficacy in NASH.

Professor Aithal has led the development of fast, and inexpensive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method to estimate the degree of inflammation and fibrosis within the whole liver (NMR Biomed. 2015). Recently, he used this method to estimate portal pressure (J Hepatol 2016), showing that it correlates with hepatic venous pressure gradient measurements - the current gold standard but invasive and expensive test, only available in selected centres.

Expertise Summary

Pharmacogenetics

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (mechanisms, biomarkers of liver injury and effective lifestyle and pharmacological interventions)

epidemiology of liver and biliary disease (cause and consequences)

Hepatobiliary imaging (assessment of degree of liver injury and endoscopic imaging techniques).

Drug-induced liver injury ((DILI) causality assessment, outcome, genetic and environmental factors that effect drug metabolism and hepatoxicity)

Teaching Summary

Having worked in University hospitals in the United Kingdom and abroad, Guru has gained experience in a variety of teaching environments and modalities. He has been a Member of the Specialty… read more

Research Summary

Current Research:

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI): Genetic and environmental factors associated with drug-induced liver injury, non-invasive markers to detect and monitor hepatotoxicity.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD): Interaction of dietary and genetic factors in the pathogenesis, non-invasive detection and stratification of NAFLD, effective interventions

Non-invasive evaluation of chronic liver disease: Application of Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging methods to detect and estimate degree of liver injury in chronic liver diseases.

Hepato-pancreatico-biliary imaging: Optimising endoscopic evaluation of hepato-pancreatico-biliary neoplacia; tools and techniques