The incidence rate of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis is gradually increasing year by year, which calls for an urgent need for effective therapeutic drugs. In recent years, various drugs have been developed, including anti-oxidative stress drugs, insulin sensitizers, PPAR agonists, thyroid receptor agonists, farnesoid X receptor agonists, ASK1 inhibitors, and pan-caspase inhibitors. This article reviews the clinical studies on the therapeutic drugs for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and summarizes the efficacy and safety of each drug, in order to provide a reference for clinical practice.

Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a type of serious brain dysfunction caused by acute or chronic liver failure or portosystemic shunt, with the clinical manifestation of neuropsychiatric abnormalities. The incidence rate of HE is 16%-21% in patients with liver cirrhosis. Spontaneous portosystemic shunt (SPSS) is one of the major pathogenesis of HE and is observed in 60%-70% of the patients with liver cirrhosis, and the size, number, and location of SPSS are directly associated with the development of HE. The development and wide application of imaging technology help to achieve a more convenient and accurate diagnosis of SPSS. Although interventional vascular embolization of SPSS has achieved a satisfactory clinical outcome in some cirrhotic patients with HE, high-quality clinical studies are still needed.