Insulin resistance and, more generally, the metabolic syndrome are currently the focus of
major research. The epidemic of obesity and related conditions, affecting the Western world
and increasing portions of the Southern hemisphere, has far-reaching medical, social and
economic implications [1]. The liver morphological expression of the metabolic syndrome is
fatty liver, a lesion that the hepatologists have known for decades as being the most
common histological picture associated with elevated liver enzymes. Among the …