Federico A, Zulli C, de Sio I, Del Prete A, Dallio M, Masarone M, Loguercio C. Focus on emerging drugs for the treatment of patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. World J Gastroenterol 2014; 20(45): 16841-16857 [PMID: 25492998 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v20.i45.16841]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Alessandro Federico, MD, PhD, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine F. Magrassi e A. Lanzara, Hepatogastroenterology Division, Interuniversity Research Centre on Food, Nutrition and the Gastrointestinal Tract (CIRANAD) - Second University of Naples, Via Pansini 5, 80131 Naples, Italy. alessandro.federico@unina2.it
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Topic Highlight
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 7, 2014; 20(45): 16841-16857 Published online Dec 7, 2014. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v20.i45.16841
Focus on emerging drugs for the treatment of patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Alessandro Federico, Claudio Zulli, Ilario de Sio, Anna Del Prete, Marcello Dallio, Mario Masarone, Carmela Loguercio
Alessandro Federico, Claudio Zulli, Ilario de Sio, Anna Del Prete, Marcello Dallio, Carmela Loguercio, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine F. Magrassi e A. Lanzara, Hepatogastroenterology Division, Interuniversity Research Centre on Food, Nutrition and the Gastrointestinal Tract (CIRANAD) - Second University of Naples, 80131 Naples, Italy
Mario Masarone, Department of Internal Medicine and Hepatology, University of Salerno, 84121 Salerno, Italy
Author contributions: Federico A, Zulli C, de Sio I, Del Prete A, Dallio M and Masarone M have made substantial contributions to acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data; They were involved in drafting the manuscript and have given final approval of the version to be published; Loguercio C has made substantial contributions to the drafting of the article and critical revisions of the article and also given final approval of the version to be published.
Correspondence to: Alessandro Federico, MD, PhD, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine F. Magrassi e A. Lanzara, Hepatogastroenterology Division, Interuniversity Research Centre on Food, Nutrition and the Gastrointestinal Tract (CIRANAD) - Second University of Naples, Via Pansini 5, 80131 Naples, Italy. alessandro.federico@unina2.it
Telephone: +39-815-666723 Fax: +39-815-666714
Received: May 11, 2014 Revised: July 16, 2014 Accepted: September 5, 2014 Published online: December 7, 2014
Core Tip
Core tip: At the moment, there is no standardized treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH); the first-line approach remains lifestyle changes (diet and physical exercise). The high risk of complications associated with NAFLD/NASH, such as cardiovascular diseases and the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma, make it necessary to apply appropriate medications to stop the progression of the disease. Considering the pathogenetic pathways known today, several therapeutic targets have been proposed, including some that look very promising; still, innovative pharmacological strategies are absolutely needed. Below, we report the real efficacies of fatty liver therapies and the most recent studies investigating this field.
