Research questions
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a chronic condition with escalating global prevalence, poses critical public health challenges due to its multidimensional pathogenesis involving cumulative modifiable risk factors across life stages. Emerging evidence highlights early adulthood (18-35 years) as a pivotal period shaping lifelong NAFLD risk trajectories, characterized by behavioral pattern formation and metabolic adaptability. This developmental window coincides with emerging subclinical hepatic steatosis and metabolic dysregulation, yet lacks symptomatic manifestations, amplifying long-term disease burdens.
Objectives
This research project aims to investigate the specific risk exposure pattern of health status in early adulthood, its spatiotemporal association with the incidence of NAFLD in middle and late life, and further explore whether healthy lifestyle in midlife plays a moderating role in this process.
Scientific rationale for the research
Longitudinal data reveal that remarkable dynamic characteristics of individual health status in early adulthood, which is not only a period of concentrated career development and social role transformation, but also a period of high incidence of westernization of diet, sharp decline in physical activity, and circadian rhythm disruption. Such unhealthy lifestyles can induce the accumulation of visceral fat, the progression of insulin resistance, and the imbalance of lipid metabolism, forming the early pathophysiological basis of NAFLD. It is worth noting that compared with middle-aged and elderly people, NAFLD patients in early adulthood often lack typical clinical symptoms, but the synergistic progression of liver steatosis in the subclinical stage and metabolic syndrome has been proved to have a more significant disease burden.
