VIDEO: NAFLD upgrade to MASLD offers ‘less stigmatizing’ positive diagnosis for patients
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In a Healio video exclusive, Edward V. Loftus Jr., MD, highlighted how rebranding nonalcoholic fatty liver disease as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease offers a “positive diagnosis” without the associated stigma.
“As you may know, there have been some changes in the nomenclature,” Loftus, the Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Professor of Gastroenterology at the Mayo Clinic told Healio. “What we used to call NAFLD is now MASLD... which means there is fat in the liver, plus a metabolic risk factor, whether that be hyperlipidemia, diabetes, increased BMI or increased waist circumference.”
During EASL Congress 2023, leaders from Latin American Association for the Study of the Liver, American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and European Association for the Study of the Liver announced that MASLD would replace NAFLD to encompass patients who have hepatic steatosis and at least one of five cardiometabolic risk factors.
In the December issue of Healio Gastroenterology, Healio sat down with experts to understand the new nomenclature, how it simplifies diagnostic criteria and aims to squash existing stigma, as well as its implications on prior research.
“We have MASLD and underneath that heading MASH but, interestingly, we also have a new heading that connotates a new opportunity to identify patients who have not been properly characterized in the past,” Stephen A. Harrison, MD, FAASLD, wrote in a related editorial in the December issue.
“The idea here is that, instead of an exclusionary diagnosis non-alcoholic you are going for a positive diagnosis,” Loftus said. “You are also incorporating the pathogenesis into the name, which may perhaps be less stigmatizing for the patient because you are not talking about fat or alcohol.”
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