Effect of Mastiha supplementation on NAFLD: The MAST4HEALTH randomised, controlled trial

NAFLD is an emerging public health issue globally and its prevalence is consistently increasing. Since there is no approved therapy for this liver disease and given that pharmacological treatment will be approved only for NASH, we wanted to investigate if Mastiha could be a non-pharmacological modulator of NAFLD markers.

Mastiha, has been shown to possess antioxidant/anti- inflammatory and lipid lowering properties and could have beneficial effects on hepatic and systemic parameters in subjects with NAFLD. To this aim we designed, MAST4HEALTH, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) program under the EU Horizon 2020 framework. MAST4HEALTH is a multicenter randomized double blind placebo controlled clinical trial to test Mastiha’s effectiveness as new non-pharmacologic strategy for NAFLD treatment (NCT03135873).

After 6-months of Mastiha supplementation, we observed a significant improvement on microbiota dysbiosis and lipid metabolite levels in patients with NAFLD. Among  severely obese patients, Mastiha also reduced markers of liver fibrosis (as assessed via MRI).

This is the pre-peer reviewed version which has been published in final form at 10.1002/mnfr.202001178. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.