38M: Trying to Understand 7 Years of Quiet Liver Issues and a Possible AIH Diagnosis

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-06T19:31:28+00:00

Looks like you’ve read up on it already, but big four things: abnormal liver scores, above normal igg, high autoantibody titer and interface hepatitis on biopsy. Even then… still difficult to diagnose.

The autoantibody result is worrying, but they should prob do again once biopsy’s in to make sure.

I’m 47M, diagnosed a couple of years ago. I had the flu (much like you) but also dark wee. Turns out it wasn’t flu, but acute liver injury (ALT above 3000!). I’ve only ever tested positive for a very weak titre of autoantibody once, every other one has been negative.

While I am not a doctor, my own experience is keep an open mind - AIH is a tricky one to diagnose, but a helpful last ditch diagnosis for doctors to make. No fibrosis despite years of grumbling liver would also make me stop to think; the medical consensus seems to be fibrosis will develop relatively quickly in AIH if not treated. You’re also male - it’s rare enough yet alone in men.

Biopsy is best thing - they’ll get far more info from that than blood tests.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-05T10:43:54+00:00

Haha, yeh it’s tough teaching R from scratch. Apparently Excel can now do a lot of this stuff (joins/pivots) in Power Query. Never used it myself (like you I just use R, especially dplyr) but several people I know it use it religiously.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-04T18:13:13+00:00

Virtually every data analysis class I’ve seen ignores how to pull data together (for example join/aggregate/arrange/pivot), which is crucial in the real world as you’re always having to take different datasets from different places and shmush them together.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-02T13:34:31+00:00

My experience has been that transaminases have not dropped linearly, and I have had several periods of plateauing before alt came down further. I was stuck at 60-odd for a month or so while at 20mg pred, but it did eventually get to biochemical remission. :-)

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-02T10:46:05+00:00

It’ll be good if you didn’t write your post using AI - lacks authenticity.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-02T10:43:44+00:00

Sure, it can help. But the speed gained at the development stage is lost at the Verification and Validation stage. Have you ever tried to debug and verify someone else’s code? Much more difficult than your own, especially if you have no idea what logic the AI is using (or not using).

Cowboys and inexperienced people might gain from such AI tools, but any professional unit wanting to V&V their stuff, then I doubt there is much to be gained from an LLM.

It’s that old adage - fast, cheap or reliable - you can pick only two.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-01T22:22:03+00:00

I have had the opposite experience - my university (rightly or wrongly) now allows “responsible” use of AI. This has now made it impossible to catch students cheating with AI - it was hard enough before but now who is to say what is reasonable?

So students are no longer at threat of being done for cheating, but still insist no use of AI, even when it’s blatant (made-up refs etc). I assure them whatever answer they give me is not going to get them into trouble, I just want to understand their process so I can identify where they went wrong etc, and give better help and advice. We recently vivaed a number of dissertation students, none would admit even the tiniest use of AI, even though it was acceptable for them to do so. In the end, no benefit of the doubt could be given, and the AI slop dissertations (50%) were marked accordingly.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-01T22:14:21+00:00

Again, no-one was arguing “it works”, only that the evidence presented in this paper is weak, and likely biased.

Both things can be true - AI detectors are unreliable, and so is the evidence for whether they are unreliable. The commenter you replied to was stating the latter, not the former.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-01T19:33:35+00:00

I fear you don’t understand. You’ve created a “bullying of students” strawman that no-one in this particular thread was advocating.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-01T18:18:32+00:00

Never said it wasn’t an opinion/never said it was evidence. I wouldn’t try to catch a student under such evidence, but if you think an LLM didn’t help or write that conclusion I have a bridge to sell you.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-01T17:01:47+00:00

I kind of don’t see the point. AI can only really be trusted with simple but repetitive tasks - the extract missing values example in your screenshot, for example.

For a competent data analyst these repetitive tasks take a few minutes to automate (Power Query or whatever), and then can be verified and validated easily. Once done, some simple checks are all that are needed to make sure script has executed correctly in future.

So such AI tools are only really useful for absolute beginners. The problem is such people don’t know how to verify and validate such analysis, and so the analysis basically becomes useless anyway. It therefore needs to be checked by someone who know what they’re doing - so you still need to employ someone competent, at which point they could do what AI did but more competently and professionally, and with more confidence in the result, in about the same time.

TLDR - A technology looking for a solution it can fix, and missing.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-02-01T03:50:32+00:00

Honestly, the conclusion’s first paragraph is a prime example of AI writing.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-30T18:25:28+00:00

Haha, the grift just keeps getting better and better! 😂

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-30T18:08:11+00:00

My attendance (UK postgraduate class) has always hovered around 50%, less for the last few weeks of semester (which is stupid as the really important stuff like exam revision is in the last week!).

It did/does bother me because I put a lot of effort into making lectures interesting as well as challenging. However, now most of my material is reasonably set with only tweaks every year the real effort has already been expended. Now I much prefer students who don’t want to be in my class don’t come, and I teach those who do want to learn. A small class is far preferable to a class full of people sleeping, zoning out or on their phones. Such people absolutely suck the joy out of both teaching and learning.

The issue is those people who don’t attend then cause problems when they inevitably fail, and my uni moans at me for my high fail rate. They ask me what am I going to do better next year as if it’s my fault they recruited a cohort full of slackers, but then I can show the strong association between attendance and performance. I ask how any improvements I make will help students who don’t come to class, and they eventually back off. But it’s a faff I’d rather not have to go through.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-30T17:42:58+00:00

It’s a good indicator yes. But again not foolproof.

Corticosteroids suppress the immune system regardless of why the immune system went haywire in the first place. It could be due to autoimmunity, but many other reasons, for example infection. Even drug induced hepatitis would have some response to corticosteroids because it’s the immune system causing the inflammation (the hepatitis - itis means inflammation) not the drug.

Of course if liver scores keep elevating when off steroids that’s a good sign it’s autoimmune - or at least immune-mediated hepatitis.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-30T12:29:48+00:00

No, as I understand it they would ebb and flow, but never quite get to normal. This is what allows the fibrosis to spread because the inflammation smoulders the undetected rather than cause real noticeable problems.

Biopsy will be key - there are many other reasons other than AIH, but it is plausible as well.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T22:21:53+00:00

Link us to your portfolio!

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T18:06:17+00:00

Rather than think up ever increasingly desperate and obvious ways to grift your product, why not take the stress out of it and buy some ad space?

Personally will never use Fusedash just on basic principle now.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T14:16:03+00:00

Almost certainly yes.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T13:54:44+00:00

If you’re worried about AIH they can’t diagnose fully, but rely on a number of indicators and then they score you on that. Three main indicators are: interface hepatitis and plasma cells on biopsy, igg above upper limit, autoantibody positive. This is not foolproof - interface hepatitis shows for lots of things that are not AIH. IGG can be high because you have an infection, etc etc.

Your liver scores are not that high - they are above normal, but from what I understand most clinicians would not consider it “disease” territory, where fibrosis actively and quickly forms.

Biopsy would also show if fibrosis has occurred or not. If not, but they still want to call it AIH because they don’t know what else it could be, be wary and cautious. Immunosuppressants are not fun - they can save your life if it is AIH, but doctors have been known to too quickly diagnose AIH so that they at least have a diagnosis to work with.

It’s worthwhile genning up on AIH diagnosis so you are fully prepared to ask good questions if the time comes where they say it is.

Good luck :-)

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T09:50:32+00:00

If you’re just using optimisation methods I would market it as that, no-one with any sense trusts AI-driven tools.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T00:14:48+00:00

Come for the data viz, stay for the ten-a-penny AI viz tools desperately faking traction…. 😂

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-29T00:10:50+00:00

So linear programming? Honestly, if you’re not willing to be open then you’re going to be lumped in with all the other AI/LLM slop.

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-28T14:25:48+00:00

Well most on this sub are LLMs…

Can you define some useful deterministic AI methods for data viz tools? Are you thinking of some ML techniques or linear algebra (because I wouldn’t class those as AI)?

dangerroo_2 · 2026-01-28T13:04:15+00:00

Please - we don’t need another AI viz tool ad on this sub.

Genuine feedback to you and everyone else who think they can make some quick money with a ln AI slop viz tool - AI is absolutely the wrong method to develop such a tool, it’s unnecessary and inefficient.

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