NAFLD or MASLD? Research Looks at Concordance of Criteria

Recent research concludes that new nomenclature of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) aligns well with the previous diagnoses of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and NASH cirrhosis.

Investigators evaluated the applicability of the new nomenclature to the real-world TARGET-NASH US adult cohort. Methods involved applying the new MASLD/metabolic steatohepatitis definitions to patients previously diagnosed with NAFLD and NASH and determining concordance between the old and new criteria.

Results showed that approximately 99% of TARGET-NASH participants met the new MASLD diagnostic criteria. Specifically, 96.3% of patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFLD) were classified as having MASLD (kappa 0.974), while 99.7% of NASH patients were categorized as having metabolic steatohepatitis (kappa 0.998), and 99.8% of NASH cirrhosis patients met the new criteria (kappa 0.999).

Reference
Barritt AS 4th, Yu F, Mospan AR, et al. High concordance between nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease in the target-nash real-world cohort. Am J Gastroenterol. 2024;119(8):1624-1627. doi:10.14309/ajg.0000000000002796