Every third Indian has a fatty liver, which predates Type 2 Diabetes and other metabolic disorders, said Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh who is himself a nationally renowned diabetologist.

The minister was launching an Indo-French Liver and Metabolic Disease Network (InFLiMeN), a virtual node to prevent and cure metabolic liver diseases at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences.

Addressing the launch programme, Dr. Jitendra Singh highlighted that the Indo-French Node, InFLiMeN, aims to address key issues related to a common metabolic liver disorder, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which can progress to cirrhosis and primary liver cancer eventually. “It predates diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and many other diseases. As an endocrinologist myself, I understand the nuances of fatty liver and its relation with diabetes and other metabolic disorders,” he added.

“Both the Indian subcontinent and Europe are attributable to changes in lifestyle, diet, and importantly metabolic syndromes such as diabetes and obesity which have contributed to a significant rise in NAFLD,” he said.

The minister shared that nearly 1 in 3 Indians have fatty liver. While in the West, most NAFLD is associated with obesity, intriguingly in the Indian subcontinent, NAFLD occurs in about 20 per cent of non-obese patients.

Emphasising the vitality of this initiative, the minister said, “There is a considerable burden of alcoholic liver disease (ALD) in India and France.” He further added that both NAFLD and ALD exhibit a very similar progression from steatosis to steatohepatitis, cirrhosis, and HCC.

Highlighting India’s progress in the health sector during the last decade, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, “India became a global leader not just in curative healthcare but also in preventive healthcare.” There is an urgent need to develop simple, low-cost diagnostic tests for the detection of different stages of fatty liver and their progression to severe, full-blown diseases. The approaches and algorithms should suit the Indian context, be low-priced, and have a point of care.

Dr. Jitendra Singh advised that a joint multi-disciplinary collaborative programme like InFLiMeN is urgently needed to understand the development, progression, and possible management of liver diseases using a comprehensive omics approach for biomarker discovery.