Ambulatory Liver Fat Monitoring in Patients With Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Overview

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects 25% of the global population and causes serious complications, including cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma or mortality. Unfortunately, there are not yet any approved drugs to treatment NAFLD. The only effective means to improve NAFLD is by weight reduction via lifestyle modifications, i.e., diet and physical activity. Most NAFLD patients lack the motivation to initiate and maintain lifestyle modifications. The investigators hypothesize that ambulatory monitoring of liver fat can help NAFLD patients lose more liver fat by motivating them to gain a sense of control over their condition.

As NAFLD is a chronic medical illness, NAFLD patients are not able to receive timely feedback from their effort, and they are often frustrated. Also, living with NAFLD may not cause major perturbations to their usual life, as NAFLD is mostly asymptomatic and patients can easily forget the significance of this condition in the long run. The investigators plan to design a randomized, controlled, non-blinded, multi-centre study to compare the effects of ambulatory liver fat monitoring and standard of care in reduction of liver fat in NAFLD patients. Fibroscan and MRI-PDFF will be used for quantification of hepatic steatosis. Apart from the effect on liver fat, the investigators will also investigate whether ambulatory liver fat monitoring promotes more weight loss and improvement in liver biochemistry.

Conditions