In conclusion, despite the fact that the two hepatokines, fetuin-A and fetuin-B, are upregulated in the state of hepatic steatosis in humans, it appears that they differently impact on glucose homeostasis.
Primary pancreatic pre-adipocytes and differentiated adipocytes were co-cultured with human islets isolated from organ donors and the metabolic crosstalk between fatty liver and fatty pancreas was mimicked by the addition of palmitate and fetuin-A.
However, when corrected for main confounders by linear modeling, fetuin A remained related to hepatic steatosis, but not to ballooning degeneration or other NAFLD features.
To investigate the causal relationship between fatty liver and Fetuin-A, we also analysed whether the inherited I148M PNPLA3 variant modulates Fetuin-A.