Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Pathophysiol. Jul 22, 2022; 13(4): 124-127
Published online Jul 22, 2022. doi: 10.4291/wjgp.v13.i4.124
Hepatomusculoskeletal disorders: Coining a new term might improve the management of the musculoskeletal manifestations of chronic liver disease
Christos Tsagkaris, Stavros P Papadakos, Dimitrios V Moysidis, Andreas S Papazoglou, Alexandra Koutsogianni, Marios Papadakis
Christos Tsagkaris, Public Health and Policy Working Group, Stg European Student Think Tank, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Stavros P Papadakos, Alexandra Koutsogianni, Laiko General Hospital of Athens, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens 18233, Greece
Dimitrios V Moysidis, Hippokration University Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54642, Greece
Andreas S Papazoglou, Athens Naval Hospital, Athens 18233, Greece
Marios Papadakis, Department of Surgery II, University Hospital Witten-Herdecke, University of Witten-Herdecke, Wuppertal 42283, Germany
Author contributions: Tsagkaris C conceptualized this letter; Tsagkaris C, Papadakos SP and Moysidis DV performed the literature search; Tsagkaris C, Papadakos SP and Papazoglou AS wrote the first draft; Moysidis DV, Koutsogianni A and Papadakis M revised the manuscript and wrote the second draft; All authors have further revised, read and approve the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflict 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: Christos Tsagkaris, MD, Academic Fellow, Public Health and Policy Working Group, Stg European Student Think Tank, Postjeskade 29, 1058 DE, Amsterdam, Netherlands. chriss20x@gmail.com
Received: December 25, 2021
Peer-review started: December 25, 2021
First decision: February 15, 2022
Revised: April 7, 2022
Accepted: June 26, 2022
Article in press: June 26, 2022
Published online: July 22, 2022
Processing time: 204 Days and 12.2 Hours
Abstract

Chronic liver disease can affect many body systems including the musculoskeletal system. The pathogenetic crosstalk between the liver and organs such as the brain and the kidneys has already been described with compound terms merging the organs affected by the pathology, such as the hepatorenal syndrome. Nevertheless, the musculoskeletal manifestations of chronic liver disease have not been coined with such a term to date. Because of this shortage, documenting the musculoskeletal implications of chronic liver disease in both research and clinical practice is challenging. To fill this gap, the authors propose the term hepatomusculoskeletal disorders, a compound term of Greek origin that encompasses all the body structures involved in the aforementioned pathologic crosstalk.

Keywords: Chronic liver disease; Hepatomusculoskeletal disorders; Musculoskeletal system; Hepatology; Pathophysiology; Osteodystrophy

Core Tip: The authors recommend coining the umbrella term “hepatomusculoskeletal disorders” in response to the need to expand knowledge about chronic liver disorders and capitalize it in the form of practice guidelines.