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Diabetes, Obesity can increase risk of developing fatty liver, cirrhosis: Study

Rajeev Choudhury

People suffering from diabetes and obesity are at higher risk of developing liver cirrhosis, researchers of a recent research letter published in the journal ‘JAMA Open Network’ said.

In the study, the researchers led by Alexandra L. Migdal from Emory University School of Medicine found that over 47% of the patients who had not received any treatment after being infected with Hepatitis C Virus and underwent ultrasound elastography had moderate to advanced scarring (cirrhosis) of the liver, while over 35% had fatty liver.

Among the study population, 24% of the patients had diabetes and 25.7% were obese, they found.

Over 17% of the patients had advanced scarring in their liver, while 11.5% were diagnosed with severe fatty liver, the researchers said.

Obese patients were four times more likely to have severe fatty liver, than people who were not obese, while those who were both as well as diabetic were almost six times more likely to have severe fatty liver, the researchers noted in their paper.

 “Compared with patients without obesity or diabetes, patients with obesity or a combination of obesity and diabetes had higher rates of S3 steatosis [severe fatty liver] (5.7% vs 22.4%vs 34.1%; P < .001),” they wrote in the paper.

Similarly, obese people were 1.36 times more likely to report advanced scarring of the liver than those with normal body weight, they added.

Moreover, the researchers also found that those who had diabetes were 1.76 and 1.44 times more likely to have cirrhosis and severe fatty liver.

“Findings from this large real-world evaluation of treatment-naive patients with HCV, focusing specifically on patients with a high prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and alcohol use in underserved populations, revealed an independent relationship between diabetes and liver fibrosis severity,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

“Our findings suggest an urgent need to investigate the interaction of multiple risk factors and the progression of liver disease to help inform evidence-based liver cancer screening strategies for individuals at highest risk,” they concluded.


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