Chairman

Prof. Shivram Prasad Singh

MBBS, MD, DM, FSGEI, FACG, AGAF, FRCP [Edin], FRCPS [Glasgow]

Professor & Head – Dept. of Gastroenterology, S.C.B. Medical College, Cuttack, Orissa, INDIA

It gives me immense pleasure to announce the launch of the ICON-D website! After months of hard work and dedication, we are delighted to officially announce the launch on July 26, 2020.
The Indian Consortium on Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease [ICON-D] Study was launched under the banner of the INASL NAFLD Taskforce, during the 2017 Annual INASL Conference in Delhi.This was planned to be a nationwide multicenter online real-life study on NAFLD with the aim to collect the data on NAFLD and its extended spectrum in the Indian population. The study was conceived to collect data regarding the burden, the phenotypic spectrum, the clinico-pathological profile, and treatment and follow up of patients with NAFLD in the Indian population. The ambitious study was envisaged to include a substudy to prospectively follow up NAFL, NASH and NASH related compensated cirrhosis, besides carrying out a cross sectional study for NASH related decompensated cirrhosis and HCC. It was planned to include in the study participants with known or suspected Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) including different spectrum of NAFLD patients [Nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL), Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), NASH-related cirrhosis and NASH related Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)]. It was decided to involve in the study 50 key institutions from different parts of India with PGI, Chandigarh as the Co-ordinating Centre for the study.

I am very happy that ICON-D has made tremendous progress under the dynamic leadership of ICON-D Convenor, Prof Ajay Duseja, with 35 centres activated all over the country recruiting about 4500 NAFLD subjects. An interim analysis of our data was presented by Prof Ajay Duseja at the Oral Plenary session of APDW 2019, Kolkata which was widely appreciated. While we have reached the halfway mark of our original study, we have also embarked upon the ICON-D Covid Study, and other studies are also in the pipeline. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Zydus-Cadila for their unconditional Educational Grant to carry out this study. 

We look forward to working with all investigators of the ICON-D study and generating meaningful real time data on NAFLD. I express my heartfelt gratitude to all our co-investigators. Finally I am extremely grateful to our patron-mentor Prof Arun Sanyal for his constant guidance and encouragement in all our endeavours.