Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 21, 2018; 24(43): 4835-4845
Published online Nov 21, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i43.4835
Promoting genetics in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: Combined risk score through polymorphisms and clinical variables
Umberto Vespasiani-Gentilucci, Paolo Gallo, Chiara Dell’Unto, Mara Volpentesta, Raffaele Antonelli-Incalzi, Antonio Picardi
Umberto Vespasiani-Gentilucci, Paolo Gallo, Chiara Dell’Unto, Mara Volpentesta, Raffaele Antonelli-Incalzi, Antonio Picardi, Unit of Internal Medicine and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University Campus Bio-Medico, Rome 00128, Italy
Author contributions: All the authors contributed to writing and revising this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
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/
Corresponding author to: Antonio Picardi, MD, PhD, Professor, Unit of Internal Medicine and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University Campus Bio-Medico, Via Alvaro del Portillo 200, Rome 00128, Italy. a.picardi@unicampus.it
Telephone: +39-6-225411207 Fax: +39-6-225411944
Received: August 9, 2018
Peer-review started: August 9, 2018
First decision: October 8, 2018
Revised: October 22, 2018
Accepted: November 2, 2018
Article in press: November 2, 2018
Published online: November 21, 2018
Core Tip

Core tip: Risk stratification is emerging as fundamental in the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) epidemic. Due to the strong heritability of hepatic fat content and of liver fibrosis progression, genetics is perfectly suitable to fulfill this task. However, notwithstanding the fact that different gene variants have been robustly associated with NAFLD and with its evolution, translation to the clinical ground has been poor or absent. The evidence produced suggests that combined risk scores, created by integrating different genetic and clinical information and tested with respect to relevant outcomes in longitudinal studies, may represent the way for genetics to gain strength in NAFLD diagnostics.