Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2017; 23(19): 3407-3417
Published online May 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i19.3407
Relationship between adipose tissue dysfunction, vitamin D deficiency and the pathogenesis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Flavia A Cimini, Ilaria Barchetta, Simone Carotti, Laura Bertoccini, Marco G Baroni, Umberto Vespasiani-Gentilucci, Maria-Gisella Cavallo, Sergio Morini
Flavia A Cimini, Ilaria Barchetta, Maria-Gisella Cavallo, Laura Bertoccini, Marco G Baroni, Department of Experimental Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, 00128 Rome, Italy
Simone Carotti, Sergio Morini, Laboratory of Microscopic and Ultrastructural Anatomy (CIR), Faculty of Medicine, University Campus Bio-Medico, 00128 Rome, Italy
Umberto Vespasiani-Gentilucci, Internal Medicine and Hepatology, University Campus Bio-Medico, 00128 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Cimini FA, Barchetta I, Carotti S, Bertoccini L and Vespasiani-Gentilucci U contributed to the literature review and wrote the paper; Baroni MG, Cavallo MG and Morini S contributed to the study conception, made revisions and helped with writing.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Sergio Morini, MD, Professor, Laboratory of Microscopic and Ultrastructural Anatomy (CIR), Faculty of Medicine, University Campus Bio-Medico, Via Alvaro Del Portillo, 21, 00128 Rome, Italy. s.morini@unicampus.it
Telephone: +39-06-225419170 Fax: +39-06-22541456
Received: December 24, 2016
Peer-review started: December 28, 2016
First decision: February 9, 2017
Revised: February 28, 2017
Accepted: April 13, 2017
Article in press: April 13, 2017
Published online: May 21, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: Obesity-associated chronic low-grade inflammation plays a pivotal role in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Vitamin D deficiency is associated with both obesity and NAFLD, and its anti-inflammatory and immune-modulatory properties provided plausible mechanisms by which hypovitaminosis D may link adipose tissue dysfunction and NAFLD. Animal studies showed beneficial effect of vitamin D supplementation on systemic inflammation and NAFLD, but these data are not confirmed by the results of clinical trials so far conducted in humans.