This recent study is statistically looking into the etiology of NAFLD, based on their research central obesity (adipose visceral fat) has a bigger role in causing NAFLD than previous findings, so basically they had some 14000 patients, metabolically healthy, unhealthy, and abdominally obese and none obese. Based on their finding “for the first time” the combination of metabolically unhealthy and central obesity were most likely causing the condition however patient who were metabolically healthy yet had abdominal obesity had quite high chances of developing the disease the interesting part is the difference between two cohorts is rather small (5% among males and %21 among females) meaning metabolically healthy or not the central obesity were the significant factor causing NAFLD. Point is central visceral fat seems to be the leading factor causing the disease and Tesamorelin among others targets and reduces visceral adiposity (central obesity). This is quite a relevant finding as a drug has to attack the cause for a disease in order to treat it. Now they are talking about NAFLD and not NASH but the idea is to reverse the process at any stage of the disease.
“Based on our current findings, we have identified for the first time the association of NAFLD with abdominal obesity phenotypes and found that even abdominal obesity patients with healthy metabolic status had a high risk of NAFLD.
Increasing evidence suggested that there was a stronger association between central obesity and the health outcomes of the disease and that excessive visceral fat deposition rather than subcutaneous fat was an important risk factor associated with IR and metabolic abnormalities.
All in all, the current study demonstrated that people with the MH−AO+ phenotype and MH+AO+ phenotype had a higher risk of NAFLD than people with the MH−AO− phenotype, especially in females. These findings highlight the importance of abdominal obesity as a risk factor for NAFLD.
After fully adjusting for confounding factors, with the MH−AO− phenotype as the reference phenotype, male MH−AO+ and MH+AO+ phenotypes increased the risk of NAFLD by 42% and 47%, respectively, the corresponding risks of MH−AO+ and MH+AO+ in females increased by 113% and 134%, respectively, by contrast, there was no significant increase in the risk of NAFLD in the MH+AO− phenotype in both sexes.”