Understanding liver and digestive diseases: a paved road to improve diagnosis, management, and treatment

Digestive diseases comprise a diverse range of illnesses, which are prevalent worldwide and represent an important health issue. This is particularly relevant for the impact of metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) due to its close association with the obesity pandemic, contributing to the escalation of MASLD as the most common form of chronic liver disease, and the main cause of liver cancer. Not only MASLD reflects the deterioration of liver health, but also has far-reaching consequences for the development of extrahepatic digestive diseases. Along with progression of liver and digestive diseases to liver, colorectal and pancreatic cancer, the onset of inflammatory diseases of the digestive tract, drug-induced liver injury, and cholestasis, the overall impact of these hepatic and digestive diseases is expected to rise in the future and hence merits the attention of clinical and translational research to increase our understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms underlying these disorders in order to improve the diagnosis, management and treatment. With this goal in mind, the current collaborative review gathers experts in a wide range of liver and digestive diseases to provide an up-to-date overview of the mechanisms of disease and identify novel strategies for the improvement of these important health issues.