Dr. D. Beard

This article describes the complex interactions occurring between diet, the gut microbiome, and bile acids in the aetiology of fatty liver disease. Emerging new molecular technologies may provide guidance in unraveling the complex physiological pathways driving fatty liver disease and better....

Although liver fat is associated with cardiovascular risk factors, the association between hepatic fibrosis and cardiovascular risk factors is less clear. M. T. Long et al. (Boston University School of Medicine, USA) performed vibration-controlled transient elastography, assessing controlled attenuation parameter...

This brief review by Kathleen E. Corey et al. (Liver Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA) provides a pragmatic guide of cardiovascular disease in NAFLD, with a focus on coronary heart disease...

Using a meta-analytic approach, J. Park et al. (Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, CA, USA) aimed to describe NAFLD incidence and prevalence, NAFLD fibrosis prevalence, and incidence of non-liver comorbidities. In this study, the overall prevalence of NAFLD was 31.46% with an incidence rate of 42.8 per 1,000 person-years...

The authors evaluated the impact of NAFLD on the risk of low muscle mass and low muscle strength in a nationwide multicentre study in a total of 1595 community-dwelling people aged 70-84 years were followed for 2 years in the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study...

A few studies investigated the Mediterranean diet in developing countries, especially middle east countries where dietary patterns are different from other parts of the world. This case-control study aimed to examine the association between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and NAFLD in Iranian adults...

“Should we be concerned about the presence of increased portal pressure in non-cirrhotic NAFLD? What would be a safe, easy, and accurate way to detect subclinical portal hypertension and utilise it in risk assessment? How could an early rise in portal pressure contribute to NAFLD pathophysiology and could these mechanisms identify novel therapeutic targets?” This article by G. Baffy...

In this review, J. L. Fraile et al. (University of Aberdeen, UK) have performed an exhaustive review of the current therapeutic landscape (drug classes, biologics vs small molecules, and target molecules) for NASH. Regarding lanifibranor, the authors stated, “it’s an oral small molecule that activates...

S. Hassani Zadeh et al. (Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran) carried out this meta-analysis to examine the association between dietary patterns and NAFLD. The authors selected three dietary patterns of Western, Prudent, and Mediterranean. The Prudent diet curtails the intake of eggs, whole milk, and whole milk-based dairy products, liver...

In order to compare the outcomes of the two diagnostic criteria in a population-based study, Q. Huang et al. (Peking University People's Hospital, Beijing, China) aimed to investigate the association of MAFLD or NAFLD with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. They recruited 12,480 participants from the Third National Health and Nutrition...

While some aetiologies can be characterised, a multifactorial disease such as MAFLD requires thorough assessment of comorbidities and severity of concomitant fibrosis to assess a patient’s overall risk....

Many studies have reported that metabolic dysfunction is closely involved in the complex mechanism underlying the development of NAFLD. This has prompted a movement to consider renaming NAFLD as metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease...