ALB and metabolic disease: Spleen deficiency might also lead to metabolic disorders such as lipid metabolism, amino acid metabolism, and energy metabolism (Li et al., 2023; Sun et al., 2024; Zhan et al., 2024), as evidenced by our results showed that NAFLD patients with SDS exhibited abnormalities in TP, ALB, LDL, and total cholesterol (TG) levels.