Over the last several years, genome-wide association studies have tied polymorphisms in the human MERTK gene—encoding Mer—to altered risk for both (a) fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection (Patin et al, 2012; Rueger et al, 2014; Matsuura & Tanaka, 2016; Jimenez-Sousa et al, 2018) and (b) NAFLD, in which two intronic single-nucleotide MERTK polymorphisms are protective (Petta et al, 2016; Musso et al, 2017). The gene discussed is MERTK; the disease is metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.