TFRC and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: In addition, the correlation heatmap of biomarkers of iron metabolism and NAFLD revealed that SI was negatively related with NAFLD (r =  − 0.13), SF was negatively related with NAFLD (r =  − 0.01), TSAT was negatively related with NAFLD (r =  − 0.13), and sTfR were positively related with NAFLD (r = 0.06) (Additional file 1: Fig. S1).