PTEN and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: In addition, it has been demonstrated that the HIF-1-PTEN/NF-κB-p65 pathway plays an important role in NAFLD progression; and in NAFLD mouse liver and HepG2 cells, HIF-1α overexpression and PTEN low expression both activate the NF-κB-p65 pathway and exacerbate the inflammatory response (128).