Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the accumulation of excess fat in liver cells in people who drink little or no alcohol, and it has become the most common chronic liver condition worldwide, closely tied to rising rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. In a subset of patients, the disease progresses to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a more severe form characterized by inflammation and liver cell damage that can advance to fibrosis, cirrhosis, or hepatocellular carcinoma. Diagnosing and staging the disease precisely remains a central challenge, since liver biopsy — the current gold standard — is invasive and impractical for population-level screening, which has driven substantial research into non-invasive biomarkers and imaging techniques. Researchers are also working to untangle the metabolic mechanisms linking insulin resistance and hepatic steatosis to fibrotic progression, with the goal of identifying therapeutic targets for a disease that still lacks approved pharmacological treatments.

Works

258,042

Total citations

3,584,337

Keywords

NAFLDNASHLiver FibrosisInsulin ResistanceHepatic SteatosisLiver Biopsy