Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common cause of chronic liver disease in Western countries that is predicted to become also the most frequent indication for liver transplantation by 2030. Over the last decade, it has been shown that the clinical burden of NAFLD is not only confined to liver-related morbidity and mortality, but there is now growing evidence that NAFLD is a multisystem disease, affecting extra-hepatic organs and regulatory pathways. For example, NAFLD increases risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular (CVD) and cardiac diseases, and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Although the primary liver pathology in NAFLD affects hepatic structure and function to cause morbidity and mortality from cirrhosis, liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma, the majority of deaths among NAFLD patients are attributable to CVD. This narrative review focuses on the rapidly expanding body of clinical evidence that supports the concept of NAFLD as a multisystem disease. The review discusses the factors involved in the progression of liver disease in NAFLD and the factors linking NAFLD with other extra-hepatic chronic diseases, such as T2DM, CVD, cardiac diseases and CKD. The review will not discuss NAFLD treatments as these are discussed elsewhere in this issue of the Journal. For this review, PubMed was searched for articles using the keywords "non-alcoholic fatty liver disease" or "fatty liver" combined with "diabetes", "cardiovascular (or cardiac) disease", "cardiovascular mortality" or "chronic kidney disease" between 1990 and 2014. Articles published in languages other than English were excluded.

Supplementary Table 1. Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale. Supplementary Table 2. Cochrane Risk of Bias Study-by-Study Table. Supplementary Figure 1. Risk of bias Graph: review authors' judgments about each domain of the Newcastle-Ottawa scale presented as percentages across all included studies.

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 , caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has attracted increasing worldwide attention. Cases of liver damage or dysfunction (mainly characterized by moderately elevated serum aspartate aminotransferase levels) have been reported among patients with COVID-19. However, it is currently uncertain whether the COVID-19related liver damage/dysfunction is due mainly to the viral infection per se or other coexisting conditions, such as the use of potentially hepatotoxic drugs and the coexistence of systemic inflammatory response, respiratory distress syndromeinduced hypoxia, and multiple organ dysfunction. Based on the current evidence from case reports and case series, this

NAFLD is significantly associated with a twofold increased risk of incident diabetes. However, the observational design of the eligible studies does not allow for proving causality.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) describes an increasingly prevalent spectrum of liver disorders associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome. It is uncertain why steatosis occurs in some individuals, whereas nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) occurs in others. We have generated a novel mouse model to test our hypothesis: that maternal fat intake contributes to the development of NAFLD in adult offspring. Female mice were fed either a high-fat (HF) or control chow (C) diet before and during gestation and lactation. Resulting offspring were fed either a C or a HF diet after weaning, to generate four offspring groups; HF/HF, HF/C, C/HF, C/C. At 15 weeks of age, liver histology was normal in both the C/C and HF/C offspring. Kleiner scoring showed that although the C/HF offspring developed nonalcoholic fatty liver, the HF/HF offspring developed NASH. At 30 weeks, histological analysis and Kleiner scoring showed that both the HF/C and C/HF groups had NAFLD, whereas the HF/HF had a more severe form of NASH. Therefore, exposure to a HF diet in utero and during lactation contributes toward NAFLD progression. We investigated the mechanisms by which this developmental priming is mediated. At 15 weeks of age, hepatic mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC) enzyme complex activity (I, II/III, and IV) was reduced in both groups of offspring from HF-fed mothers (HF/C and HF/HF). In addition, measurement of hepatic gene expression indicated that lipogenesis, oxidative stress, and inflammatory pathways were up-regulated in the 15-week-old HF/C and HF/HF offspring. Conclusion: Maternal fat intake contributes toward the NAFLD progression in adult offspring, which is mediated through impaired hepatic mitochondrial metabolism and up-regulated hepatic lipogenesis.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects up to a third of the population worldwide and may confer increased cardiometabolic risk with consequent adverse cardiovascular outcomes independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors and the metabolic syndrome. It is characterized almost universally by insulin resistance and is strongly associated with type 2 diabetes and obesity. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a marker of pathological ectopic fat accumulation combined with a low-grade chronic inflammatory state. This results in several deleterious pathophysiological processes including abnormal glucose, fatty acid and lipoprotein metabolism, increased oxidative stress, deranged adipokine profile, hypercoaguability, endothelial dysfunction, and accelerated progression of atherosclerosis. This ultimately leads to a dysfunctional cardiometabolic phenotype with cardiovascular mortality representing the main mode of premature death in NAFLD. This review is aimed at introducing NAFLD to the clinical cardiologist by discussing in-depth the evidence to date linking NAFLD with cardiovascular disease, reviewing the likely mechanisms underlying this association, as well as summarizing from a cardiologist's perspective, current and potential future treatment options for this increasingly prevalent disease.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has attracted increasing worldwide attention (1). Obesity commonly aggravates the severity of respiratory diseases, but it is currently not known whether obese patients are also more likely to have greater COVID-19 severity of illness. We investigated the association between obesity and COVID-19 severity of illness among patients with laboratoryconfirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. We enrolled adult patients with COVID-19 from three hospitals in China between 17 January 2020 and 11 February 2020. Seventy-five patients were diagnosed as obese (i.e., case subjects). We randomly matched each case subject with one control subject (nonobese) by sex (1:1) and age (65 years). The cohort thus comprised 150 patients with COVID-19. The study protocol was approved by local ethics committees of the three hospitals.

We aimed to illustrate the epidemiology of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in high-risk groups, which were identified based on existing literature. To this end, PubMed was searched to retrieve original articles published through May 2015 using relevant and pertinent keywords "nonalcoholic fatty liver disease" and "diabetes", "obesity", "hyperlipidemia", "familial heterozygous hypobelipoproteinemia", "hypertension", "metabolic syndrome", "ethnicity", "family history" or "genetic polymorphisms".We found that age, sex and ethnicity are major physiologic modifiers of the risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, along with belonging to "nonalcoholic fatty liver disease families" and carrying risk alleles for selected genetic polymorphisms. Metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, mixed hyperlipidaemia and hypocholesterolemia due to familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia are the major metabolic modifiers of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease risk. Compared to these metabolic conditions, however, arterial hypertension appears to carry a relatively more modest risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.A better understanding of the epidemiology of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease may result in a more liberal policy of case finding among high-risk groups.