Too much medicine: overdiagnosis and overtreatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now the most common cause of liver disease. This remarkable rise in prevalence over the past 20 years is largely through the recognition of fatty liver in the absence of excessive alcohol consumption as a disease. The natural history of NAFLD is incompletely understood, and although a small proportion of individuals with NAFLD will develop complications of liver disease, most will not. This raises the...