Nalini Lakhani, a Hong Kong secondary school teacher, had never heard of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) until she got her diagnosis.
Few people have heard of it, even though it is the most common chronic liver disease worldwide.
There is a 95 per cent overlap in the diagnostic criteria for the two conditions, says Dr Loey Mak Lung-yi, a Hong Kong-based specialist in gastroenterology and hepatology. Both involve having excessive fat in the liver, considered to be more than 5 per cent of the liver’s weight.
The shift in terminology from NAFLD to MASLD began in 2020 as doctors and experts gained a deeper understanding of the disease’s key driver: metabolic dysfunction.
That includes conditions such as obesity, diabetes and dyslipidemia, the latter of which is characterised by high levels of fats – or lipids, including cholesterol and triglycerides – in the blood.
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