Description

Sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass) and frailty (loss of muscle function) have increasingly become recognized as major prognostic factors in predicting morbidity and mortality with several disease states, including cirrhosis. Cirrhosis represents end-stage liver disease and is complicated by a multitude of clinical sequelae, such as variceal hemorrhage, ascites, renal insufficiency, hepatic encephalopathy, hepatopulmonary syndrome, cardiac dysfunction, infection and hepatocellular carcinoma. To date, liver transplantation remains the only prospect for a curative treatment. As the liver is the primary metabolic organ, sarcopenia is prevalent in cirrhosis, afflicting 30-70% of patients. Observational studies have implicated sarcopenia as an independent risk factor for morbidity and mortality in all clinical sequelae of cirrhosis. Moreover, sarcopenia and frailty have been shown to increase morbidity and mortality of transplant eligible patients on the liver transplant waitlist, as well as mortality of patients after liver transplant. Given the prevalence of sarcopenia and frailty in this patient population, and the severe clinical impacts, addressing these adverse predictors may have profound implications for the outcomes of patients with cirrhosis.

Cirrhosis often leads to portal hypertension, complications of which include lower extremity edema, ascites, hepatic hydrothorax, variceal bleeding, portal hypertensive gastropathy, portal vein thrombosis, and hepatic encephalopathy. Patients with cirrhosis and complications of portal hypertension are currently managed in several ways in clinical practice:

• medical management, including diuretics and non-selective beta blocker therapy
• endoscopic options include variceal banding or glue embolization
• invasive options include large-volume paracentesis (LVP) or transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) creation.

Since 1988, the Liver Transplant Program at OHSU has been successfully treating waitlisted cirrhotic patients with complications of portal hypertension using a combination of these therapies. TIPS creation, particularly in the current era of stent grafts with a dedicated device for this procedure, has been a part of managing patients with cirrhosis as a bridge to transplant for two decades. Depending on the indication, patients can be treated with a combination of these therapies often with significant overlap. For example, a given patient with portal hypertension and ascites may be managed with diuretics and serial LVP vs. TIPS creation, and a given patient with variceal bleeding may be treated with beta-blockers and endoscopic banding vs. TIPS creation.

Of relevance to the proposed trial, recent observational studies have demonstrated significant reversal of sarcopenia after TIPS creation, and this reversal has been strongly correlated with improved survival and less hepatic encephalopathy. Moreover, the time course of muscle gains has been observed to occur within the first 6 months of TIPS creation, critical for patients awaiting liver transplantation, as benefits would occur during typical transplant waitlist time periods. Thus, TIPS creation may represent a major unmet need to address sarcopenia and frailty in patients with cirrhosis, and represents an intervention with potential to reverse this debilitating condition and improve clinical outcomes. Putative mechanisms for how TIPS creation may improve body composition include decreased congestive enteropathy resulting in improved gut nutrient absorption, decrease in metabolic burden from a hyperdynamic cardiopulmonary status in the setting of fluid overload, improvement in renal function, and changes in the gut microbiome resulting in conversion from a catabolic to an anabolic state. A major gap in knowledge, however, remains whether TIPS creation can directly reverse muscle loss. Furthermore, whether reversal of muscle loss results in improved measures of strength, physical performance and clinical outcomes has not been prospectively studied. In this proposal, the investigators plan to address this major knowledge gap through a pilot prospective randomized controlled trial tracking patients managed with TIPS creation compared to those managed without TIPS to determine whether these observational findings can be seen in a randomized cohort.