When disease severity was measured, advanced BA patients (severe fibrosis, jaundice, and a high AST value) had significantly higher relative ATX mRNA expression than early stage BA patients with mild fibrosis, non-jaundice, and a low AST value (P = 0.0056, P = 0.015, and P = 0.022, respectively) and also healthy controls (P = 0.0003, P = 0.0003, and P = 0.0001, respectively) (Fig 3B–3D). Here, ENPP2 is linked to Jaundice.