The increased transport of these harmful substances to the liver promotes liver inflammation, enhances nutrient and calorie absorption, and alters choline metabolism. Higher levels of intestinal bacteria that produce butyrate may be protective.Excessive macronutrient intake contributes to gut inflammation and perturbation of homeostasis, and micronutrients may also be involved. In addition to reducing weight and risk factors, lifestyle changes may prompt positive changes in the gut microbiota. In particular, diet diversity may play a role that was overlooked in animal studies, since they often compare a Western high-fat, low-diversity diet against a low-fat but higher-diversity chow. The health benefits after bariatric surgery may also involve changes in the gut microbiota by increasing gut permeability. Diagnosis
NAFLD is defined by evidence of fatty liver without another factor that could explain the liver fat accumulation, such as excessive alcohol use (>21 standard drinks/week for men and >14 for women in the USA; >30 g daily for men and >20 g for women in UK and EU, >140 g/week for men and >70 g/week for women in Asia-Pacific and most NIH clinical studies), drug-induced steatosis, chronic hepatitis C, heredity or by deficiencies in parenteral nutrition such as choline and endocrine conditions. If any of these factors are observed, an investigation into alternative causes of fatty liver unrelated to NAFLD is recommended. A history of chronic alcohol usage is an important consideration.NAFLD comprises two histological categories: NAFL, and the more aggressive form NASH.
NAFLD prevalence is expected to increase steadily, from 25% in 2018 to a projected 33.5% of people with NAFLD globally in 2030, and from 20% to a projected 27% of those with NAFLD will progress to NASH. History
The first acknowledged case of obesity-related non-alcoholic fatty liver was observed in 1952 by Samuel Zelman. Zelman started investigating after observing a fatty liver in a hospital employee who drank more than twenty bottles of Coca-Cola a day. He then went on to design a trial for a year and a half on 20 obese people who were not alcoholic, finding that about half of them had substantially fatty livers. Fatty liver was, however, linked to diabetes since at least 1784 — an observation picked up again in the 1930s. Studies in experimental animals implicated choline inadequacy in the 1920s and excess sugar consumption in 1949.The name "non-alcoholic steatohepatitis" (NASH) was later defined in 1980 by Jurgen Ludwig and his colleagues from the Mayo Clinic to raise awareness of the existence of this pathology, as similar reports previously were dismissed as "patients lies". This paper was mostly ignored at the time but eventually came to be seen as a landmark paper, and starting in the mid-1990s, the condition began to be intensively studied, with a series of international meetings being held on the topic since 1998. The broader NAFLD term started to be used around 2002.