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NAFLD prevalent in 2.5% of healthy European adolescents
Recent data indicates that 2.5% of healthy European adolescents have ultrasound scan-determined nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD, thus increasing the risk for adverse levels of liver fibrosis and cardiometabolic risk factors.
“Our study, together with other published studies, suggests that among healthy contemporary European-origin adolescents between 2% and 3% have moderate to severe NAFLD,” Debbie A. Lawlor, MSc, MBChB, PhD, MPH, MRCGP, MFPHM, of the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit and School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and colleagues wrote. “We have further shown that those with this condition have evidence of more adverse levels of insulin, glucose, and markers of dyslipidemia together with more adverse levels of liver pathology, including liver fibrosis as assessed by shear velocity, even after taking account of the strong association of total body fat with liver fat.”
This suggests that greater amounts of general adiposity, rather than central adiposity, is a key risk factor for NAFLD in adolescence, and that using BMI to predict NAFLD may be as useful as DXA fat mass, according the researchers.
The prevalence of NAFLD was 2.5% (95% CI, 1.8–3.3) in both girls and boys included in the study, researchers wrote.
The researchers assessed shear velocity and volume, fasting glucose, insulin, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), and haptoglobin (Hp) in their cross-sectional analysis of healthy adolescents (1,059 girls; mean age, 17.9 years) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (n=1,874).
Total body fat mass was significantly associated with DXA-determined NAFLD by an OR of 3.15 per 10 kg fat mass (95% CI, 2.44–4.07), according to data.
The children also displayed higher levels of fasting glucose, insulin, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, ALT, AST, GGT, and Hp, and lower LDL cholesterol, according to data.
Hepatic shear velocity (mean difference: 22.8% (95% CI, 15.6–30.5), triglyceride levels (23.6%; 95% CI, 6–44.2), and insulin (39.4%; 95% CI, 10.7–75.5) appeared greater in those with NAFLD compared with those without NAFLD, after adjustments for fat mass and other confounders.
The researchers suggest follow-up studies to determine the long-term outcomes of NAFLD in this patient population.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.