Donald Bren Chief Executive Chair
Professor
Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases
Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis or MASH is a severe form of fatty liver disease, a condition that afflicts roughly one-third of adults worldwide: nearly 2 billion people. Untreated, MASH can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer, whose rates are rising.
The question I want to answer is whether MASH drives heart failure in metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Metabolic syndrome is even more widespread than fatty liver disease, and people are often asymptomatic until the condition has advanced to serious or chronic disease.
Learning how MASH drives heart failure in metabolic syndrome is a first and essential step toward finding ways to treat and even reverse it. If we can do that, literally millions of deaths can be prevented and millions of lives improved or saved.