Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the hepatic manifestation of a metabolic syndrome, is a leading cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. NAFLD is associated with type 2 diabetes, obesity and genetic factors. Despite intensive effort and numerous trials, as of today there is no approved treatment for NAFLD. Weight reduction is recommended, but no long-term control study assessing the evolution of NAFLD/NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis) during lifestyle modification is available.~The main objective of presented project is to compare the progression of NAFLD/NASH in patients with metabolic syndrome randomly assigned to a standard care or a professional lifestyle modification counselling during a 1-yr follow-up. The investigators hypothesize that professionally tailored life-style counselling in patient with metabolic syndrome and NAFLD will improve liver fat content and other non-invasive parameters of liver disease, and factors (including gut microbiota) affecting progression/regression of NAFLD will be identified.
The project will study the impact of individually tailored lifestyle counselling compared to standard care on the parameters of NAFLD/NASH in patients with metabolic syndrome. The factors affecting the outcome (including clinical and laboratory parameters and microbiome profiling) will be evaluated.