Commentary
Two new position papers convincingly propose that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease needs a new name — metabolic associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). A new name for this disease affecting nearly one billion people globally is overdue, as knowledge gained from the past decades has definitely demonstrated that MAFLD is a purely metabolic disorder.
Such a concept is also supported by the fact that patients with MAFLD can fluctuate between steatosis and steatohepatitis over rather short timeframes, and steatohepatitis might slowly or rapidly progress towards fibrosis and fibrosis can even spontaneously regress, all reflecting a highly dynamic disease process.
Renaming NAFLD as MAFLD brings this disease closer to type 2 diabetes. Diabetologists and hepatologists should have to intensify their collaborative actions with support from epidemiologists and basic scientists and was accompanied by a significant decrease in the overall number of leukocytes. Hepatic monocytes were decreased as well.
