Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Jun 27, 2024; 16(6): 863-866
Published online Jun 27, 2024. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v16.i6.863
From non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease: Rationale and implications for the new terminology
Stephen David Howard Malnick, Doron Zamir
Stephen David Howard Malnick, Department of Internal Medicine C, Kaplan Medical Center, Rehovot 76100, Israel
Doron Zamir, Department of Internal Medicine D, Barzilai Medical Center, Ashkelon 7830604, Israel
Author contributions: Malnick SDH and Zamir D contributed equally to the conception, writing and editing of this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There ae no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Stephen David Howard Malnick, AGAF, MA, MBBS, MSc, Adjunct Associate Professor, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine C, Kaplan Medical Center, Rehov Pasternak, Rehovot 76100, Israel. stephen@malnick.net
Received: December 7, 2023
Revised: February 12, 2024
Accepted: April 25, 2024
Published online: June 27, 2024
Processing time: 195 Days and 21.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Due to the epidemic of obesity, there has been an increase in the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and hepatic steatosis. The term non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) was given to describe the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome. Recently the nomenclature has been changed to metabolic dysfunction- associated steatotic liver disease. This removes stigmata associated with the term fatty and include a new entity reflecting both the metabolic syndrome and alcohol as causes of steatosis. These new terms do not alter the inclusion criteria for most of the published studies on NAFLD and will facilitate future studies.