Tackling the Fatty-Liver Timebomb

Affecting 1 in 5 today but with rising incidence, the medical community fear that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) represents an increasingly serious public health threat (1) – especially as effective treatments are proving elusive. Now, researchers based at the University of Barcelona have published work on an oral therapeutic designed to modulate the activity of fibroblast growth factor (FGF21) – a key component in NAFLD pathology (2).

FGF21 exhibits strong anti-diabetic and, by extension, anti-fatty liver properties (3, 4) – conversely, growing resistance to FGF21 has been correlated with obesity and fat-related morbidities (5).