MicroRNA: A Novel Class of Potential Biomarkers and Therapeutic Target for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease/Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is commonly related to metabolic-associated chronic liver disease, which has a pathological spectrum from simple steatosis to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). It is mainly associated with other disease conditions, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and cardiovascular disease. MicroRNAs (miRs) are small non-coding RNAs, having 22 nucleotides in length, that play an important role in epigenetic modulation for disease. miRs act by targeting mRNA and altering its expression. Alteration of miRs regulates different stages of NAFLD and NASH. A liver biopsy is the gold standard diagnosis for NASH. However, it is an invasive diagnostic process, so it is not feasible to screen a large number of NASH patients. Consequently, it is imperative to develop new non-invasive diagnosis strategies to detect NAFLD to NASH progression. Circulating miR can be a novel diagnostic marker for NAFLD/NASH. This review explains the role of miRs in the pathogenesis and miR-based targeted therapy in NAFLD/NASH.