Young adults with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD): why current services fail – and how we can fix them

One in five young adults in the UK already has fatty-liver disease. In the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), hepatic steatosis was detected in 20.7% of participants at age 24, compared with 2.5% at age 17, an eight-fold increase over 6 years. 1 2 Roughly 1 in 40 showed evidence of fibrosis.2 Cohort data from Sweden demonstrate that individuals diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) before age 25 have markedly higher all-cause and liver-related mortality than matched controls.3