Metabolic Disorders and Fibrosis: the Mechanism and Potential Target

In recent years, the number of patients suffering from metabolic disorder diseases such as diabetes, obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), sarcopenia and hyperlipidemia has increased. Fibrosis is the ultimate pathological feature of many metabolic disorder diseases (e.g., diabetic nephropathy eventually leads to renal fibrosis), and its incidence is on the rise worldwide. Fibrosis of vital organs will result in organ dysfunction and even death, with nearly 45% of deaths in developed countries are due to chronic fibroproliferative diseases.

On the other hand, these patients with chronic fibroproliferative diseases are usually accompanied with metabolic disorders. For instance, persistent chronic pancreatitis leads to pancreatic fibrosis and is associated with permanent damage to exocrine and endocrine cells. The subsequent exocrine pancreatic insufficiency will lead to diabetes. However, how metabolic disorders and fibrosis interact with each other remains unclear. Therefore, a better understanding of metabolic disorders and fibrosis could provide us the new insights and help us identify novel therapies.

This Research Topic aims to provide a comprehensive view of how metabolic disorders and fibrosis interact with each other by presenting the more recent innovations.

Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:

• Lipid metabolic disorders and fibrosis;

• Glucose metabolic disorders and fibrosis;

• Amino acid disorders and fibrosis;

• Nutritional disorders and fibrosis;

• Metabolic dysfunction in tumor-associated fibrosis;

• Value of nutrition and metabolism-associated biomarkers in the process of fibrosis;

• Value of nutrition status assessments in predicting fibrosis;

• Role of diet in fibrosis related diseases.