Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is often asymptomatic early on but can progress to irreversible conditions like cirrhosis. Due to limited access to human liver biopsies, systematic and integrative molecular resources remain scarce. In this study, we performed transcriptomic analyses on liver and metabolomic analyses on liver and plasma samples from morbidly obese individuals without liver pathology or at early-stage MASLD. While the plasma metabolomic profile did not fully mirror liver histological features, dual-omics integration of liver samples revealed significantly remodeled lipid and amino acid metabolism pathways. Integrative network analysis uncoupled metabolic remodeling and gene expression as independent features of hepatic steatosis and fibrosis progression, respectively. Notably, GTPases and their regulators emerged as a novel class of genes linked to early liver fibrosis. This study offers a detailed molecular landscape of early MASLD in obesity and highlights potential targets of obesity-linked liver fibrosis.
Zhao et al. (2026) studied this question.