As a term, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) was proposed to describe the histopathological fatty changes in hepatocytes in which alcohol consumption is not involved as the etiological inducer
[1]. In general, NAFLD embraces several forms of liver disorders involving fat disposition in hepatocytes ranging from the simple steatosis to the advanced stage, namely, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)
[2]. Moreover, NAFLD is known as the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome since it is associated with metabolic disorders, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance
[1]. NASH is characterized by the finding of hepatic steatosis with inflammation due to the excessive disposition of fats in hepatocytes, which makes hepatocytes predisposed to oxidative stress and the subsequent inflammatory and fibrosis cascades
[3]. However, obesity or simple hepatic steatosis is normally not sufficient to develop inflammation and fibrosis, thus the “second-hit” hypothesis was proposed to further overstate the liver injury
[4]. On the other hand, NAFLD is considered a multisystem disease as it is significantly related to extra-hepatic complications, including type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease
[5], cardiovascular disease
[6], and even neurological diseases
[7]. These complications make it difficult to develop a comprehensive experimental model that fully mimics the underlying mechanisms of NAFLD. Depending on the study objectives, many models have been developed to elucidate the pathophysiological mechanisms of NAFLD, including genetically modified animals, such as leptin deficiency (ob/ob) mice
[6], leptin receptor (LepR) deficiency (db/db) mice
[8], KK-A
y mice
[9], phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN)-deficient mice
[10], CD36-deficient mice
[11], peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPAR-α) knockout mice
[12], acyl CoA oxidase (AOX)-null mice
[13], methionine adenosyltransferase-1A (MAT1A)-null mice
[14], nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2)-deficient mice
[15], Zucker (fa/fa) rats
[16], Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima Fatty (OLETF) rats
[17], and Koletsky f/f rats
[18]. Furthermore, NAFLD can be induced by feeding mice different kinds of diets, including a high-fat diet (HFD)
[19], high-carbohydrate diet (HCD)
[20], methionine- and choline-deficient (MCD) diet
[21], and fast food (FF) diet
[22]. Furthermore, to reach the NASH and fibrosis stage, some models need to be triggered by a second stimulus or agent (“second hit”), such as tunicamycin
[23], dexamethasone
[24], and carbon tetrachloride (CCl
4)
[25]. It was found that male C57BL/6J mice fed a high-fat, -sucrose, and -cholesterol diet with high fructose or glucose water and injected with CCl
4 showed the closest similarity to the human NAFLD pattern
[26]. However, the most common dietary animal models used to elucidate the molecular and cellular progression of NAFLD either induce hepatotoxicity with MCD or over-nutrition disorders with HFD
[4] as both cover most NAFLD manifestations. Although a significant number of studies regarding the cellular and molecular pathogenicity of NAFLD/NASH have been conducted on those two dietary animal models, gene expression could provide an extra essential approach to elucidate the complex pathogenesis of NAFLD.