Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Jan;18(1):31-41.
doi: 10.1007/s11739-022-03139-x. Epub 2022 Nov 10.

NAFLD as the metabolic hallmark of obesity

Alba Rojano #  1 , Elena Sena #  2 , Ramiro Manzano-Nuñez  2 , Juan M Pericàs  3   4 , Andreea Ciudin  5   6   7   8
Affiliations
Review

NAFLD as the metabolic hallmark of obesity

Alba Rojano et al. Intern Emerg Med. 2023 Jan.

Abstract

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become the most common chronic liver disease worldwide, associated with a high risk of progression to NASH, liver cirrhosis and hepatocarcinoma. Its prevalence is closely related to obesity (understood as adipose-based disease and insulin resistance), which makes that at present NAFLD can be considered a metabolic dysfunction hallmark, regardless of the body mass index. Despite being such a prevalent condition, with such severe consequences, at present there are no reliable biomarkers for its diagnosis or specific treatment. Significant and sustained weight loss, as well as some antidiabetic treatments, has shown promising results for NAFLD but data needs confirmation in larger clinical trials and longer follow-up. Efforts should be made for a better and more accurate baseline diagnosis (including large-scale genetics), identification of patients at higher risk for progression to NASH as well as adequate treatment, to allow us to offer a personalized approach in NAFLD in the context of precision medicine.

Keywords: Liver inflammation; Liver steatosis; Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; Obesity.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Younossi ZM, Koenig AB, Abdelatif D, Fazel Y, Henry L, Wymer M (2016) Global epidemiology of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease-meta-analytic assessment of prevalence. Incidence Outcomes Hepatol 64(1):73–84. https://doi.org/10.1002/hep.28431 - DOI
    1. The GBD 2015 Obesity Collaborators (2015) Obesity Collaborators. (2017) Health Effects of Overweight and Obesity in 195 Countries over 25 Years. N Engl J Med 377:13–27. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1614362 - DOI
    1. Obesity and overweight. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight (accessed 2022–08–11).
    1. Buzzetti E, Pinzani M, Tsochatzis EA (2016) The multiple-hit pathogenesis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Metabolism 65(8):1038–1048. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2015.12.012 - DOI
    1. NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) (2016) Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014: a pooled analysis of 1698 population-based measurement studies with 19·2 million participants. Lancet 387:1377–1396. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30054-X - DOI

LinkOut - more resources