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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 7, 2025; 31(45): 113115
Published online Dec 7, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i45.113115
Published online Dec 7, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i45.113115
Revisiting the association between metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and sleep: Moving from correlation to causation
Qiu-Han Yao, College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China
Wei-Yu Yang, Department of Thoracic Surgery, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410011, Hunan Province, China
Author contributions: Yao QH wrote the original draft; Yang WY contributed to conceptualization, writing, reviewing, and editing; Yao QH and Yang WY participated in drafting the manuscript; and all authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wei-Yu Yang, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Thoracic Surgery, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, No. 139 Renmin Middle Road, Changsha 410011, Hunan Province, China. yangweiyu@csu.edu.cn
Received: August 15, 2025
Revised: October 2, 2025
Accepted: November 3, 2025
Published online: December 7, 2025
Processing time: 110 Days and 15.4 Hours
Revised: October 2, 2025
Accepted: November 3, 2025
Published online: December 7, 2025
Processing time: 110 Days and 15.4 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: The recent study by Hyatt et al investigated the prevalence and associations between metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), poor sleep, and life quality in patients with human immunodeficiency virus. To further explore the potential causal relationship between specific sleep traits and MASLD, we conducted a Mendelian randomization analysis, which demonstrated that sleep apnea significantly increases the risk of MASLD (P = 0.014), whereas no causal associations were found for other sleep traits (P > 0.05). These findings complement and extend those of Hyatt et al, providing additional insight into the associations between MASLD and sleep.