The heated debate over NAFLD renaming: An ongoing saga

Abstract

In 1980, Jurgen Ludwig, a pathologist at the Mayo Clinic, and colleagues formally described a disorder that involved the accumulation of fat in the liver, independent of significant alcohol consumption, or other secondary causes of chronic hepatic disease.[1] This condition – termed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) – was specifically defined non-alcoholic to differentiate it from alcoholic fatty liver disease, which exhibits similar histological alterations in the liver but is primarily caused by excessive alcohol consumption.