[Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis: a brief review on its concept]

Since the first report by Ludwig, considerable progress has been made in the understanding of NASH and it is not currently considered as a merely benign clinical entity, but is rather thought as a common disease with a variety of clinical sequelae including liver cirrhosis and even hepatocellular carcinoma. Thus, NASH is considered as a type of a larger spectrum of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) that is a consequence of insulin resistance and other underlining factors with histological findings ranging from fatty change alone to fat plus inflammation, to fat plus ballooning degeneration, and to fat plus alcoholic hepatitis-like lesions including Mallory body and fibrosis, the latter two categories being considered as NASH. In this brief review article, particular emphasis has been paid to the clinical entity, namely cryptogenic cirrhosis in relation to the pathogenesis of NASH.