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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 21, 2016; 22(43): 9488-9505
Published online Nov 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i43.9488
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease - A multisystem disease?
Ivana Mikolasevic, Sandra Milic, Tamara Turk Wensveen, Ivana Grgic, Ivan Jakopcic, Davor Stimac, Felix Wensveen, Lidija Orlic
Ivana Mikolasevic, Sandra Milic, Davor Stimac, Department of Gastroenterology, UHC Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Tamara Turk Wensveen, Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, UHC Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Ivana Grgic, Department of Cardiology, UHC Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Ivan Jakopcic, School of Medicine, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Felix Wensveen, Department of Histology and Embryology, School of Medicine, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Lidija Orlic, Department of Nephrology, Dialysis and Kidney Transplantation, UHC Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Author contributions: Mikolasevic I researched the database, wrote the manuscript, and is the guarantor of this work; Milic S, Wensveen TT, Grgic I, Jakopcic I, Stimac D, Wensveen F and Orlic L contributed to the discussion and reviewed/edited the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: 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/
Correspondence to: Ivana Mikolasevic, MD, PhD, Department of Gastroenterology, UHC Rijeka, Kresimirova 42, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia. ivana.mikolasevic@gmail.com
Telephone: +38-551-658122
Received: June 28, 2016
Peer-review started: June 30, 2016
First decision: July 29, 2016
Revised: August 30, 2016
Accepted: October 19, 2016
Article in press: October 19, 2016
Published online: November 21, 2016
Processing time: 142 Days and 16.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Given the increasing worldwide incidence of obesity and metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become the most common cause of chronic liver disease. Recent developments in the field have shown that NAFLD not only is a “liver disease” but also is the underlying cause of an increasing number of extrahepatic manifestations; thus, it should be treated as a multisystem disease. NAFLD is most prominently linked to chronic kidney disease, mellitus type 2 and cardiovascular disease, as well as a number of other severe chronic diseases. These findings demonstrate that NAFLD ranks amongst the most serious public health problems of our time.