2013 年 40 巻 4 号 p. 476-481
Because of the therapeutic advance in the past 25 years, the incidence of viral hepatitis constituting the largest part of liver disease decreased rapidly, and the main target in the field of liver disease is now shifting from viral hepatitis to fatty liver.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) occurs in patients without or with almost no history of alcohol intake. NAFLD is recognized as an expression type of metabolic syndrome in the liver and the patients of NAFLD are also increasing along with the increase of metabolic syndrome. Many of the NAFLD cases are detected by health checkup. However, there are some cases of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that develop liver cirrhosis and /or liver cancer of which the prognosis is poor. So, a follow-up observation and cooperation with specialists in different specialties are necessary in the situation of health checkup.
We previously reported some research results about NAFLD/NASH. In this review, we present basic knowledge concerning disease concept, occurrence mechanism, diagnosis and treatment to make better performance at the health evaluation and promotion.
