In addition, the rats that were fed the HP diet showed increased PTH levels in the blood, and a previous study indicated that an elevated level of PTH in serum may be the predictive factor for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis in morbidly obese patients.(27) Therefore, we next examined the effect of phosphate or PTH on hepatocytes using HepG2 cells. This evidence concerns the gene PTH and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.