Over the past 2 decades, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has grown from a relatively unknown disease to the most common cause of CLD in the world. In fact, 25% of the world's population is currently thought to have NAFLD. Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is the subtype of NAFLD that can progress to cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and death. NAFLD and NASH are found in not only adults-there is a high prevalence in children and adolescents. Due to NAFLD's close association with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and obesity, the latest models predict the prevalence of NAFLD and NASH will increase, causing a tremendous clinical and economic burden and poor patient-reported outcomes. Nonetheless, there is no accurate non-invasive method to detect NASH and treatment is limited to life style modifications. To examine the state of NAFLD among different regions and understand the global trajectory of this disease, an international group of experts came together during 2017 AASLD Global NAFLD Forum. We provide a summary of this forum and an assessment of the current state of NAFLD and NASH worldwide. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

A newly identified coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, has been posing significant threats to public health since December 2019. ACE2, the host cell receptor for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS), has recently been demonstrated in mediating 2019-nCoV infection. Interestingly, besides the respiratory system, substantial proportion of SARS and 2019-nCoV patients showed signs of various degrees of liver damage, the mechanism and implication of which have not yet been determined. Here, we performed an unbiased evaluation of cell type specific expression of ACE2 in healthy liver tissues using single cell RNA-seq data of two independent cohorts, and identified specific expression in cholangiocytes. The results indicated that virus might directly bind to ACE2 positive cholangiocytes but not necessarily hepatocytes. This finding suggested the liver abnormalities of SARS and 2019-nCoV patients may not be due to hepatocyte damage, but cholangiocyte dysfunction and other causes such as drug induced and systemic inflammatory response induced liver injury. Our findings indicate that special care of liver dysfunction should be installed in treating 2019-nCoV patients during the hospitalization and shortly after cure. : bioRxiv preprint rise of liver enzymes, implying liver function damage in patients infected with MERS-CoV [9].An very recent epidemiologic study revealed that 43 out of 99 initial patients infected with 2019-nCoV had various degrees of liver function abnormality, with alanine aminotransferase (ALT) or aspartate aminotransferase (AST) above the normal range, and more important, one