Author information
1
Department of Medicine, Center for Liver Diseases, Inova Fairfax Hospital, 3300 Gallows Road, Falls Church, VA 22042, USA; Betty and Guy Beatty Center for Integrated Research, Inova Health System, 3300 Gallows Road, Falls Church, VA 22042, USA. Electronic address: zobair.younossi@inova.org.
2
Center for Outcomes Research in Liver Disease, 2411 I Street NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA.
3
Betty and Guy Beatty Center for Integrated Research, Inova Health System, 3300 Gallows Road, Falls Church, VA 22042, USA.
4
Department of Medicine, Center for Liver Diseases, Inova Fairfax Hospital, 3300 Gallows Road, Falls Church, VA 22042, USA.
Abstract
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a chronic liver disease with an increasing global prevalence associated with tremendous clinical, economic, and health-related quality-of-life burden. Clinically, NAFLD is considered the liver manifestation of metabolic syndrome. However, diagnosing NAFLD presents significant challenges due to the limited noninvasive and accurate diagnostic tools available to not only accurately diagnose nonalcoholic steatohepatitis but also to stage hepatic fibrosis, the major predictor of long-term outcomes, including mortality.