The high prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is increasingly attracting the attention of the medical community. In view of the data accumulation on the mechanisms of the NAFLD pathogenesis, the consensus of experts in February 2020 proposed a new term for this chronic liver disease —«metabolic-associated fatty liver disease» (MAFLD). It’s entails a revision of the approach to diagnosis: if earlier NAFLD was diagnosed per exclusionem, then after replacing NAFLD with MAFLD the diagnosis will be based on the identification of certain metabolic disorders regardless the presence of liver diseases of a different etiology. Despite the large number of studies devoted to the search for drugs that affect inflammation and fibrosis in NAFLD, effective drug approaches to the treatment of this disease are currently limited. At the same time, it has been proven that a decrease in body weight and an increase in physical activity contribute to an improvement in both the histological picture in the liver and the prognosis of patients with NAFLD. One of the hypotheses that helps explain the beneficial effect of these two factors in patients with NAFLD and opens up new opportunities for the treatment and prevention of this disease is the hypothesis of the relationship between NAFLD and sarcopenia, a condition manifested by a decrease in strength, skeletal muscle mass and impaired function.