CD34 and Hepatic fibrosis: In the whole baseline cohort, the density of CD34-positive vessels was strongly linked with liver fibrosis (p <0.001) (Fig. 3A) and liver inflammation (p = 0.027) using the NASH Clinical Research Network (CRN) scoring system37 instead of the SAF-score,26 because of a more granular score for inflammation ranging from 0 to 3 (Fig. 3B).