AASLD 2026 Recap: Earlier Detection, More MASH Therapies Ahead

Finding patients with liver disease earlier, improving noninvasive tests, and expanding treatment options are among the developments experts expect to shape liver care in the coming year, according to researchers and clinicians interviewed by The American Journal of Managed Care^® at The Liver Meeting 2026 from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Denver, Colorado. Each was asked which research from the meeting would most influence patient care, and their answers ranged from early detection to a growing pipeline of new drugs.

Closing the Gap in Patient Identification

Snehal Chaudhari, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, pointed to research on serum proteomics and cell-free DNA methylation to detect early metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). Future blood tests that measure amino acids and other small molecules, she said, may offer a snapshot of disease in the liver and other organs.

Jörn M. Schattenberg, MD, professor at Saarland University Medical Center, said a gap remains in identifying patients with a disease that is now treatable but underrecognized. He called identifying at-risk patients and “testing them to rule out advanced fibrosis” a key message from the meeting.

Zobair M. Younossi, MD, MPH, chairman of the Global NASH Council, noted that many patients have overlapping conditions, such as hepatitis B with metabolic disease, making noninvasive tests for risk stratification important. Rising obesity and diabetes mean few patients have a single liver disease.

A Growing Treatment Pipeline

Schattenberg highlighted phase 2b data on efinopegdutide, while Mohammad Alabbas, MD, of Cleveland Clinic, said GLP-1–based therapies and investigational triple agonists such as retatrutide could reduce MASH and future cirrhosis. Sri Harsha Boppana, MD, of Nassau University Medical Center, cited studies on GLP-1s and graft failure and blood tests for earlier liver cancer detection.

Younossi urged clinicians to pay attention because “in the future we’ll have a lot more options than the currently 2 drugs that’s available.”