In this issue of the European Journal of Internal Medicine, Di Ciaula et al [1] provide new insights into metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) by looking into the potential role of exposure to air pollution. Such insights are urgently needed: MASLD has become the most common liver disease worldwide due to the pronounced increase of overweight, obesity and associated metabolic syndrome during the last decades [2]. The current prevalence of steatotic liver disease (SLD) (of which the large majority can be subclassified as MASLD) is approximately 30 % of the entire global population.
