Metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease, most commonly known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), has a prevalence of about 30% in the general population and about 80% in people with obesity. It is characterized by steatosis and metabolic dysfunction, with inflammation and fibrogenesis.
In a potential breakthrough for diagnosis and treatment development of liver disease, the Biomarkers Consortium’s Noninvasive Biomarkers of Metabolic Liver Disease (NIMBLE) project demonstrated that a blood test could diagnose nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an increasingly common liver disease in the U.S. The study, published in Nature Medicine, identified four biomarkers that outperform current liquid biopsies for NASH.
