Clinicopathologic features of de novo non-alcoholic steatohepatitis in the post-transplant setting

BACKGROUND: Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) has become an increasingly recognized problem in patients after orthotopic liver transplant. The aims of this study were to compare the clinicopathologic features of recurrent and de novo NASH. METHODS: From 1995 to 2016, we performed a retrospective review of patients with a histological diagnosis of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis made more than 6 months after liver transplant at University of California, San Francisco. The cases were categorized into de novo (n = 19) or recurrent steatohepatitis (n = 37). RESULTS: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection-related cirrhosis was the most common etiology of transplantation in de novo NASH (78% of cases, n = 29). There was no difference in glycogenosis or presence of grade 3 steatosis. More recurrent NASH biopsies had small ballooned hepatocytes (62.5% of cases) compared to de novo NASH (26.7%) (p = 0.03), and were less likely to show prominent portal inflammation (5% versus 40.5%, p = 0.0049). The diagnosis of recurrent NASH was made significantly sooner after transplantation than the diagnosis of de novo NASH (2.8 years versus 4.8 years, p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our results support that recurrent NASH demonstrates distinct clinicopathologic features compared to de novo NASH arising in the post-transplant setting.