MERTK and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: Based on a genome-wide study in patients with CHC which, amongst several susceptibility loci for severity and progression of liver fibrosis, identified as the strongest one the homozygosity for rs4374383 G>A single nucleotide polymorphism, a non-coding variant in the MERTK gene [103], an in vivo and in vitro study was conducted on NAFLD.