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Abstract
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) spectrum comprises simple steatosis and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that can lead to fibrosis and cirrhosis. The patients usually have no history of excessive alcohol consumption and other etiologies that can cause fatty liver. Understanding of the pathophysiology of NAFLD has revealed that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play significant roles in modulating the disease susceptibility, pathogenesis and progression. Currently, the ncRNAs are grouped according to their sizes and their regulatory or housekeeping functions. Each of these ncRNAs has a wide range of involvement in the regulation of the genes and biological pathways. Here, we briefly review the current literature the regulatory ncRNAs in NAFLD pathogenesis and progression, mainly the microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs and circular RNAs. We also discuss the co-regulatory functions and interactions between these ncRNAs in modulating the disease pathogenesis. Elucidation of ncRNAs in NAFLD may facilitate the identification of early diagnostic biomarkers and development of therapeutic strategies for NAFLD.
Highlights
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the common chronic liver diseases
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a spectrum disease, in which untreated patients with liver steatosis or non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) can progress to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that further increases the risk of developing cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (Streba et al, 2015)
Previous studies have shown that non-coding RNAs are implicated in the etiology of NAFLD and possibly be the key mediators
Summary
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the common chronic liver diseases. Due to the word limit imposed, this review will not discuss NAFLD/NASH pathogenesis in details, as previous reviews have covered the topic extensively, including the various mechanisms, pathways and genetic factors involved (Tilg and Moschen, 2010; Sumida et al, 2013; Peverill et al, 2014; Magee et al, 2016; Ananthanarayanan, 2018; Eslam et al, 2018; Ibrahim et al, 2018; Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) refers to a group of RNAs that do not encode for a protein, and most of these ncRNAs are the products of alternative splicing with the larger transcripts become the precursors for smaller ncRNAs (Djebali et al, 2012) These ncRNAs are considered to be the genome “junks,” but in recent years, ncRNAs are shown to be involved in various cellular processes and disease stages, with emerging evidence of their interactions with each other to form a complex regulatory network (Yamamura et al, 2018).
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