International NASH Day helps raise awareness about NASH and fatty liver disease – recognized as a national and international epidemic that impacts millions worldwide – and brings together thought leaders and patient advocacy groups to provide education about this serious, yet little-known disease.
The more severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), NASH is an asymptomatic, progressive and burgeoning liver disease that can lead to increased liver-related mortality and morbidity. Estimates show that 357 million people will have NASH globally by 2030. Because NASH symptoms are not obvious in the early stage of the disease, it is often underreported and diagnosed at an advanced critical stage.
While the COVID-19 pandemic limits locally organized events for this important day, we support advocates who are raising awareness and promoting early intervention to treat fatty liver disease and NASH, which affects more than 115 million people worldwide. While the threat of contracting coronavirus weighs heavily, increasingly people are living with advancing liver disease. In these stressful times, liver health matters.
FibroScan: Important Tool for Identifying People at Risk
The need for point-of-care examinations, monitoring and ongoing assessment of liver fat and stiffness as provided by FibroScan and the FAST Score are critical to helping identify individuals with NASH at risk of progression to cirrhosis.
FibroScan is the most widely studied tool in the world for non-invasive quantitative liver assessment in point of care with over 6,000+ FibroScan system placed worldwide and 1,500 FibroScan systems placed in healthcare settings across the United States – including physician offices, diagnostic centers and hospitals. It is expected that FibroScan examinations will be performed as a routine part of patient management.
Furthermore, NAFLD and NASH are major risk factors for concurrent conditions: more than 70% of patients are obese, up to 75% have Type 2 diabetes, and 20-80% have hyperlipidemia. Unchecked, NASH may lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver transplant.
Global Effort
International NASH Day calls for unity, collaboration, innovation, best practice sharing and the development of real-world evidence to create standardization and systematization of care models that address major NAFLD/NASH gaps to battle this growing epidemic.
Let’s join forces this International NASH Day to promote, collaborate and share best practices to create standardization and systematization of care models that address major NAFLD/NASH.