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Significant weight loss (mean 34 kg) achieved via laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding leads to major improvement or resolution of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and hepatic fibrosis in severely obese patients.

For severely obese individuals with fatty liver disease, achieving significant and sustained weight loss is the most effective way to reverse liver damage, including fibrosis and NASH. While lifestyle changes are the foundation, surgical interventions like gastric banding can facilitate the substantial weight loss (often >50% excess weight) required to resolve these conditions, which is difficult to maintain with diet alone.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
In conclusion, weight loss after surgery provides major improvement or resolution of obesity and metabolic syndrome-associated abnormal liver histological features in severely obese subjects.
John B. Dixon et al. · Hepatology · 2004

Why this rating

Case series with paired biopsies, no control group, but objective histological endpoints.

Source

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: Improvement in liver histological analysis with weight loss

John B. Dixon et al. · Hepatology · 2004

DOI 10.1002/hep.20251

case_series · n=36Cited 727×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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