Background: The global obesity epidemic has increased the prevalence of fatty liver disease. At present, 14% to 27% of the general population in the industrialized world has non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods: We review pertinent publications retrieved by a selective search of the PubMed database for the years 1995 to 2013. Results: The term “non-alcoholic fatty liver disease” covers cases of a wide spectrum of severity, ranging from bland fatty liver without any inflammation and with little or no tendency to progress all the way to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) with inflammatory reactions and hepatocyte damage, with or without fibrosis. Some 5% to 20% of patients with NAFLD develop NASH, which undergoes a further transition to higher-grade fibrosis in 10% to 20% of cases. In fewer than 5% of cases, fibrosis progresses to cirrhosis. These approximate figures lead to an estimate of 0.05% to 0.3% for the prevalence of cirrhosis in the general population. About 2% of all cirrhosis patients per year develop hepatocellular carcinoma. The diagnosis of fatty liver disease can be suspected initially on the basis of abnormally high aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT) and/or alanine aminotransferase (ALAT) levels and abnormal ultrasonographic findings. The positive predictive value of an ultrasonographic study for mild steatosis is 67% at most. The NAFLD fibrosis score, which is computed on the basis of multiple parameters (age, body-mass index, diabetes status, ASAT, ALAT, platelet count, and albumin level), has a positive predictive value of 82% to 90% and a negative predictive value of 88% to 93%. Liver biopsy is the gold standard for diagnosis but should be performed sparingly in view of its rare but sometimes life-threatening complications, such as hemorrhage. The treatment of NAFLD and NASH consists mainly of changes in lifestyle and nutrition. Conclusion: NAFLD can, in principle, be reversed. This is only possible with weight reduction by at least 3% to 5%.

Background: Drug induced immune hemolytic anemia (DIIHA) is a rare complication and often underdiagnosed. DIIHA is frequently associated with a bad outcome, including organ failure and even death. For the last decades, ceftriaxone has been one of the most common drugs causing DIIHA, and ceftriaxone-induced immune hemolytic anemia (IHA) has especially been reported to cause severe complications and fatal outcomes. Case Presentation: A 76-year-old male patient was treated with ceftriaxone for cholangitis. Short time after antibiotic exposure the patient was referred to intensive care unit due to cardiopulmonary instability. Hemolysis was observed on laboratory testing and the patient developed severe renal failure with a need for hemodialysis for 2 weeks. Medical history revealed that the patient had been previously exposed to ceftriaxone less than 3 weeks before with subsequent hemolytic reaction. Further causes for hemolytic anemia were excluded and drug-induced immune hemolytic (DIIHA) anemia to ceftriaxone could be confirmed. Conclusions: The case demonstrates the severity of ceftriaxone-induced immune hemolytic anemia, a rare, but immediately life-threatening condition of a frequently used antibiotic in clinical practice. Early and correct diagnosis of DIIHA is crucial, as immediate withdrawal of the causative drug is essential for the patient prognosis. Thus, awareness for this complication must be raised among treating physicians.

Lipids are the most energy‐dense components of the diet, and their overconsumption promotes obesity and diabetes. Dietary fat content has been linked to the lipid processing activity by the intestine and its overall capacity to absorb triglycerides (TG). However, the signaling cascades driving intestinal lipid absorption in response to elevated dietary fat are largely unknown. Here, we describe an unexpected role of the protein kinase D2 (PKD2) in lipid homeostasis. We demonstrate that PKD2 activity promotes chylomicron‐mediated TG transfer in enterocytes. PKD2 increases chylomicron size to enhance the TG secretion on the basolateral side of the mouse and human enterocytes, which is associated with decreased abundance of APOA4. PKD2 activation in intestine also correlates positively with circulating TG in obese human patients. Importantly, deletion, inactivation, or inhibition of PKD2 ameliorates high‐fat diet‐induced obesity and diabetes and improves gut microbiota profile in mice. Taken together, our findings suggest that PKD2 represents a key signaling node promoting dietary fat absorption and may serve as an attractive target for the treatment of obesity.

Background & aims Serum interferon-gamma-inducible protein-10 (IP-10) is elevated in cholestatic liver diseases and predicts response to antiviral therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Dipeptidylpeptidase 4 (DPPIV) cleaves active IP-10 into an inactive form, which inhibits recruitment of CXCR3+ T cells to the liver. In this study the link between IP-10 levels, DPPIV activity in serum and CXCR3+ T cells is analysed in cholestatic and non-cholestatic liver patients. Methods In serum DPPIV activity (by enzymatic assay), IP-10 (by ELISA) and bile acids (BA) (by enzymatic assay) were analysed in 229 naive HCV genotype (GT) 1 patients and in 16 patients with cholestatic liver disease. In a prospective follow-up (FU) cohort of 27 HCV GT 1 patients peripheral CD3+CXCR3+, CD4+CXCR3+ and CD8+CXCR3+ cells were measured by FACS. Results In 229 HCV patients serum IP-10 levels correlated positively to DPPIV serum activity. Higher IP-10 levels and DPPIV activity were detected in cholestatic and in cirrhotic HCV patients. Increased IP-10 serum levels were associated with therapeutic non-response to antiviral treatment with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin. In the HCV FU cohort elevated IP-10 serum levels and increased BA were associated with higher frequencies of peripheral CD3+CXCR3+, CD4+CXCR3+ and CD8+CXCR3+ T cells. Positive correlation between serum IP-10 levels and DPPIV activity was likewise validated in patients with cholestatic liver diseases. Conclusions A strong correlation between elevated serum levels of IP-10 and DPPIV activity was seen in different cholestatic patient groups. Furthermore, in cholestatic HCV patients a functional link to increased numbers of peripheral CXCR3+ immune cells could be observed. The source of DPPIV release in cholestatic patients remains open.

Background & aims Current non-invasive scores for the assessment of severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and identification of patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) have insufficient performance to be included in clinical routine. In the current study, we developed a novel machine learning approach to overcome the caveats of existing approaches. Methods Non-invasive parameters were selected by an ensemble feature selection (EFS) from a retrospectively collected training cohort of 164 obese individuals (age: 43.5±10.3y; BMI: 54.1±10.1kg/m2) to develop a model able to predict the histological assessed NAFLD activity score (NAS). The model was evaluated in an independent validation cohort (122 patients, age: 45.2±11.75y, BMI: 50.8±8.61kg/m2). Results EFS identified age, γGT, HbA1c, adiponectin, and M30 as being highly associated with NAFLD. The model reached a Spearman correlation coefficient with the NAS of 0.46 in the training cohort and was able to differentiate between NAFL (NAS≤4) and NASH (NAS>4) with an AUC of 0.73. In the independent validation cohort, an AUC of 0.7 was achieved for this separation. We further analyzed the potential of the new model for disease monitoring in an obese cohort of 38 patients under lifestyle intervention for one year. While all patients lost weight under intervention, increasing scores were observed in 15 patients. Increasing scores were associated with significantly lower absolute weight loss, lower reduction of waist circumference and basal metabolic rate. Conclusions A newly developed model (http://CHek.heiderlab.de) can predict presence or absence of NASH with reasonable performance. The new score could be used to detect NASH and monitor disease progression or therapy response to weight loss interventions.